Title: using wp_mail with php-generated attachments Last modified: August 20, 2016 --- # using wp_mail with php-generated attachments * [panda47](https://wordpress.org/support/users/panda47/) * (@panda47) * [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/using-wp_mail-with-php-generated-attachments/) * hello, * TLDR version – I had some problem sending e-mails with on-the-fly generated attachments, so here’s what I was trying to do and how I fixed it (end of TLDR) * I am currently working for non-profit organization and I had to deploy simple form on one of our websites running WP. * The funny thing to do was generating PDF of what the user posted in the form and sending this PDF as an e-mail attachment to him. * long story short – as a form input we use si-contact-form ([http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-contact-form/](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/si-contact-form/)) and to generate PDFs I chose FPDF ([http://www.fpdf.org/](http://www.fpdf.org/)). * FPDF allows me to pass the pdf as a string with `$string = $pdf->Output("filename- this_is_ignored_when_i_want_string", "S");` and then I wanted to add that as an attachment. unfortunatelly wp_mail doesn’t support adding string attachments, although it uses phpmailer, which itself has this feature `AddStringAttachment( $string,$filename,$encoding,$type);` * So I had to add it manually – in a body part of the message, and of course set the content-type header to multipart/mixed… * ``` $semirandom = md5(time()); $header .= 'Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=' . $semirandom . "\r\n"; $message = "--".$semirandom."\r\n"; $message .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset='. get_option('blog_charset') . $php_eol; //$msg is previously generated message from what admin of the site specifies $message .= "\r\n".$msg."\r\n\r\n"; $message .= "--".$semirandom."\r\n"; $message .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"form.pdf\"\r\n"; $message .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"form.pdf\"\r\n"; $message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n\r\n"; $message .= chunk_split(base64_encode($pdf->Output("","S"))); $message .= "--".$semirandom."--"; @wp_mail($email, $subj, $message, $header); ``` * which worked fine in almost everything (gmail and yahoo etc. throung webbrowsers, some company mail servers with thunderbird/outlook…) until my friend tried it with his university e-mail account forwarded to gmail, which instead of text displayed the actual stuff I put in $message * ``` --8d5ae687d4dacb540c7bde17ab5e7fef Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 hello, blah blah text of the e-mail --8d5ae687d4dacb540c7bde17ab5e7fef Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="form.pdf" Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="form.pdf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 go8PC9UeXBlIC9QYWdlCi9QYXJlbnQgMSAwIFIKL1Jlc291cmNlcyAy IDAgUgovQ29udGVudHMgNCAwIFI+PgplbmRvYmoKNCA... (encoded PDF) --8d5ae687d4dacb540c7bde17ab5e7fef-- ``` * So I had to dig. As it turns out, the message had two “content-type: multipart/ mixed” headers like this: * ``` Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="5b34d68abe22d374e2af04c6783370f2" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: multipart/mixed; charset="" ``` * the first one (that one with boundary, which is !before! MIME-Version: 1.0) is the one I inserted, the second one was inserted by wp_mail(). And this is not what we want, even if most of mailservers and clients did not have problem with it… * I found the problem in pluggable.php somewhere around line 410: * ``` // Set Content-Type and charset // If we don't have a content-type from the input headers if ( !isset( $content_type ) ) $content_type = 'text/plain'; $content_type = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_content_type', $content_type ); $phpmailer->ContentType = $content_type; // Set whether it's plaintext, depending on $content_type if ( 'text/html' == $content_type ) $phpmailer->IsHTML( true ); // If we don't have a charset from the input headers if ( !isset( $charset ) ) $charset = get_bloginfo( 'charset' ); // Set the content-type and charset $phpmailer->CharSet = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_charset', $charset ); // Set custom headers if ( !empty( $headers ) ) { foreach( (array) $headers as $name => $content ) { $phpmailer->AddCustomHeader( sprintf( '%1$s: %2$s', $name, $content ) ); } if ( false !== stripos( $content_type, 'multipart' ) && ! empty($boundary) ) $phpmailer->AddCustomHeader( sprintf( "Content-Type: %s;\n\t boundary=\"%s\"", $content_type, $boundary ) ); } ``` * this code sets the multipart/mixed twice – first one is the `$phpmailer->ContentType = $content_type;` line, which makes that header below “MIME-Version: 1.0”, but without boundary * and the second one is the last line of this snippet, which adds it with boundary, but as a custom header which is placed before “MIME-Version: 1.0” * so a quick fix for me looks like this – it sets the boundary right to to $phpmailer- >ContentType and I deleted the second part which adds it as custom header * ``` //fixed by Martin Svetlik if ( false !== stripos( $content_type, 'multipart' ) && ! empty($boundary) ) { $phpmailer->ContentType = $content_type . "; boundary=" . $boundary; } else { $phpmailer->ContentType = $content_type; // Set whether it's plaintext, depending on $content_type if ( 'text/html' == $content_type ) $phpmailer->IsHTML( true ); // If we don't have a charset from the input headers if ( !isset( $charset ) ) $charset = get_bloginfo( 'charset' ); } //end of the fix // Set the content-type and charset $phpmailer->CharSet = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_charset', $charset ); // Set custom headers if ( !empty( $headers ) ) { foreach( (array) $headers as $name => $content ) { $phpmailer->AddCustomHeader( sprintf( '%1$s: %2$s', $name, $content ) ); } /* //M.S. deteled this - it's set it several rows up if ( false !== stripos( $content_type, 'multipart' ) && ! empty($boundary) ) $phpmailer->AddCustomHeader( sprintf( "Content-Type: %s;\n\t boundary=%s", $content_type, $boundary ) ); */ } ``` * this works pretty good, but produces header with “charset” even for multipart messages like * ``` MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=3432f0f547aafa6045243aba478151d3; charset="" ``` * and it’s not much user-friendly. * so the ultimate sollution was to add function to work with string attachments– the function wp_mail in pluggable.php is now declared as `function wp_mail( $ to, $subject, $message, $headers = '', $attachments = array(), $string_attachments = array() )` * and at the end, where normal attachments are added is my new part which adds string attachments, so it looks like this * ``` if ( !empty( $attachments ) ) { foreach ( $attachments as $attachment ) { try { $phpmailer->AddAttachment($attachment); } catch ( phpmailerException $e ) { continue; } } } //added this. Martin Svetlik if ( !empty( $string_attachments ) ) { foreach ( $string_attachments as $str_attachment ) { try { $phpmailer->AddStringAttachment($str_attachment[0], $str_attachment[1], $str_attachment[2], $str_attachment[3]); } catch ( phpmailerException $e ) { continue; } } } ``` * and it is used like this * ``` $str_att1 = array(); $str_att1[0] = $pdf->Output("","S"); $str_att1[1] = "F3_registracia.pdf"; $str_att1[2] = "base64"; $str_att1[3] = "application/octet-stream"; $string_att_array = array(); $string_att_array[] = $str_att1; @wp_mail($email, $subj, $msg, $header, $normal_attachments, $string_att_array); ``` * hope this helps if somebody has the same problem, and maybe even maked into next version of WP 🙂 The topic ‘using wp_mail with php-generated attachments’ is closed to new replies. * In: [Hacks](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/plugins-and-hacks/hacks/) * 0 replies * 1 participant * Last reply from: [panda47](https://wordpress.org/support/users/panda47/) * Last activity: [13 years, 3 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/using-wp_mail-with-php-generated-attachments/) * Status: not resolved ## Topics ### Topics with no replies ### Non-support topics ### Resolved topics ### Unresolved topics ### All topics