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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T04:23:35+00:00

I’m using Zend_View to template text email content. However, I’ve come across one problem

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I’m using Zend_View to template text email content. However, I’ve come across one problem which I have been unable to solve: If a line ends with a php block (?>), then the line break is lost.

Does anyone have any idea how I can solve this?

The application is using Zend framework, but I have no particular reason to use Zend_View to render the email template (except that it looked the easiest, most obvious way to do it), so if there’s an alternative solution, that would be good.

I’ve tried examining the raw text output, and the linebreaks are completely lost. No “\r” or “\n” to be seen, so there’s nothing left that I can replace.

Code to send email:

$emailView = new Zend_View();
$emailView->setScriptPath( realpath (FRONTEND_APPLICATION_PATH .'/../email/') );
$bodyText = $emailView->render('recruitment-job-alert-text.phtml');

// $model = new Model_VacancyDetail();
// $model->find(1);
// $emailView->vacancyDetail = $model;

$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$mail->setSubject( 'Job Alert: ' . $model->references['vacancy_type'] );
$mail->addTo($fromEmail, $fromName);
$mail->setFrom( $fromEmail, $fromName );
$mail->setBodyHtml( $bodyHtml );
$mail->setBodyText( $bodyText );
$mail->send();

Email template content:

Title: <?= $this->escape($this->vacancyDetail->references['vacancy_type']) ?>

Location: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->references['name'] ?>
Department: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->references['department_name'] ?>
Require Driving Licence: <?= ( $this->vacancyDetail->requireDrivingLicence == 1 ) ? 'Yes' : 'No' ?>
Working Hours: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->workingHours ?>.
Benefits: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->benefits ?>.
Salary: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->salary ?>.

Details:
<?= strip_tags($this->vacancyDetail->description) ?>

Apply now at http://www.example.com/recruitment

Example of resulting email content:

Title: Example Vacancy Type
Location: Example LocationDepartment: Example DepartmentRequire Driving Licence: YesWorking Hours: 40.
Benefits: Company car.
Salary: £15,000pa.

Details:
This is an example position. It does not really exist.
Apply now at http://www.example.com/recruitment
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I believe it’s PHP eating the newline after the ?>. Generally this is a good thing, but I can see why it is annoying in your case.

    You’ll probably need to do something like this:

    Title: <?= $this->escape($this->vacancyDetail->references['vacancy_type'])."\n" ?>

Location: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->references['name']."\n" ?>
Department: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->references['department_name']."\n" ?>

    Edit:

    Here’s a reference just to confirm I’m not going crazy: http://www.php.net/manual/en/faq.using.php#faq.using.newlines

    Why is this a good thing? Well imagine your email template was:

    Title: <?= $this->escape($this->vacancyDetail->references['vacancy_type'])."\n" ?>

<?php if (!empty($this->vacancyDetail->references['name'])) { ?>
Location: <?= $this->vacancyDetail->references['name']."\n" ?>
<?php } ?>
Departments:
<?php foreach ($this->vacancyDetail->references['departments'] as $dept) { ?>
<?=$dept->name."\n"?>
<?php } ?>

    in that situation you wouldn’t want to end up with several newlines between each of the lines that’s actually output (a problem I had recently in an email template for a non-PHP project).

    Another option for you might be to not store your templates in PHP, just use {name}, {department_name} or similar for your variables and then parse them out.

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