Question

Say, I have an application/xhtml+xml content and a gif image. How can I serve (not render) these two in a single http get request (using PHP)? It should be a multipart/related content. After reading this RFC, I tried something; but it did not work. (No, I am not trying to send emails with attachment)

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Finally I succeeded doing that. I think, it will be useful if I write how I did that. I have added this as an answer. Please look below.

Answer 1

Here is it [worked for me] (No, I did not used PHPMailer; may be it is useful, but I could not make it working):

// Two contents : application/xhtml+xml and image/gif
// Here we go
<?php
    $boundary = "ghorar#deem";
    $im_len = filesize("path/to/abc.gif")
    header("Content-Type:multipart/related; boundary=\"$boundary\"; type=\"application/xhtml+xml\"");
    $xml_cnt = <<<EOD
<media xmlns="http://www.sth.com/sth.xsd">
    <objectURI>cid:[e-mail]</objectURI>
    <size>$im_len</size>
    <type>image/gif</type>
    <name>abcxyz</name>     
    <description>blah blah</description>
</media>
EOD;
    $xml_len = strlen($xml_cnt);        
    $im = imagecreatefromgif("path/to/abc.gif");
    $to_send = "This is a multi-part message example in MIME format

--$boundary
Content-Type: application/xhtml+xml;
Content-ID: <[e-mail]>
Content-Length: $xml_len

$xml_cnt
--$boundary
Content-Type: image/gif;
Content-ID: <[e-mail]>
Content-Length: $im_Len
Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary

";
    echo $to_send;
    imagegif($im);
    echo "\r\n--$boundary--";
    imagedestroy($im);
?>

You can load the xml from file also. But, note that if your xml refers the image (like I did here) you need to refer that with its Content-ID. Also, note the ‘<‘ ‘>’ characters in the Content-ID field of the image (after the boundary) and the ‘cid:’ notation in the place where it is referred. It worked for me. Thanks to Carlos Lima for spending time for me.