Question

I’m doingsome tests, I tried two solutions so far:

The first one sends the message inside the headers (message parameter of the mail() function is empty) []

    $boundary = "nextPart";
    $headers = "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
    $headers .= "From: ".$from_name." <".$from.">\r\n";
    $headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary = $boundary\r\n";
    //Html
    $headers .= "\n--$boundary\n";
    $headers .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
    $headers .= $html;
    //Text
    $headers .= "\n--$boundary\n";
    $headers .= "Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
    $headers .= $text;

The second one is this one: http://www.webcheatsheet.com/PHP/send_email_text_html_attachment.php#attachment (set headers and sends them inside the message)

Non of them works properly (the first one doesn’t work at all, the second works in gmail but it’s not a properly formatted email, and some client can’t handle it).
Dissecting the code of php mailer (http://phpmailer.worxware.com/index.php?pg=phpmailer) i saw that it doesn’t even try to send multipart emails.

So I’m wondering is it possible to send PROPERLY formatted multipart email with the php mail function.

Thank you

p.s. I know and use pear mail, I just want to understand this thing.

Answer 1

yes, it is possible. PHP’s mail(); function is nothing more than a handy function to deliver your ‘raw’ message to the underlying operating system’s mail handler (sendmail for example).

So if your message headers- and message body combined are a correct MIME encoded message, things will work fine.

To figure out the details, find a simple mail client and analyse it’s emails. Combine this with the MIME specifications and you should get there.