PHP mail format

jphilapy

I am trying to send out emails by allowing a user to paste text into a form and then submit it to a php script that sends the message to the reciepient.

Here is the script:

$headers = "From: $From\n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: $From\n";

mail("$addresses","$Subject",$Body,"$headers");

But this was posing problems becuase it was causing the email to appear with extra lines, so then I add this to the code:

$Body = str_replace("\n","",$Body);

Now the emails look normal except now some people are recieving email without any returns whatsoever. So all the text is bunched up.

Any ideas on how I can solve this problem?

Thanks,
Jeff

PHPGuru2

I don't understand why you would like to remove extra lines, but if you only would like to have one carrige return at every end of lines then you can try removing double carrige returns:

$Body = str_replace("\n\n","",$Body);

I'm not sure it would work or if you can get what you want, but it's worth trying 🙂

jphilapy

I am under the impression that when the form is submitted it submits both a \r and a \n and that is why the email was printing extra lines. For example a line that was supposed to look like this:

This is line one
This is line two

ended up looking like this:

This is line one

This is line two

So I removed the \n from the code and it seemed to work.

So isn't it printing both a \n\r? how can I tell?

Jeff

PHPGuru2

I'm not sure what \r is or does.

You can try to find the pattern of what's causing the problem (adding \r and \n). Try replacing \r with some key (e.g. <r>) and also \n with some key (<n>) and see how the patterns are. You may have to run several times to see but it may help you to figure out what's wrong or doing when user submit a data from your form.

Weedpacket

Originally posted by jphilapy
I am under the impression that when the form is submitted it submits both a \r and a \n and that is why the email was printing extra lines. For example a line that was supposed to look like this:

This is line one
This is line two

ended up looking like this:

This is line one

This is line two

So I removed the \n from the code and it seemed to work.

So isn't it printing both a \n\r? how can I tell?

Jeff

Do you mean \n\r or \r\n? It's supposed to be \r\n....

jphilapy

What difference does it make regarding the order of the \r and \n?

I am guessing that the \r creates a return and then the \n creates an additional empty line thefore creating two empty lines total, whereas the \n at the end of a line just effectivevly ends a line and the return creates a new line which only creates one empty line total.

Thanks,
Jeff

Weedpacket

Originally posted by jphilapy
What difference does it make regarding the order of the \r and \n?

It's the standard.

RFC822
3.1.2. STRUCTURE OF HEADER FIELDS
Once a field has been unfolded, it may be viewed as being composed of a field-name followed by a colon (":"), followed by a field-body, and terminated by a carriage-return/line-feed. The field-name must be composed of printable ASCII characters (i.e., characters that have values between 33. and 126., decimal, except colon). The field-body may be composed of any ASCII characters, except CR or LF. (While CR and/or LF may be present in the actual text, they are removed by the action of unfolding the field.)

Besides, Unix machines use \n (ASCII10) to indicate the end of a line in a text file, Macs use \r (ASCII13) and Windows machines use \r\n (ASCII13 ASCII10) in that order. Yes, two characters where everybody else uses one.

jphilapy

My assumption is that an email sent from a form should result in an email that contains the same format as the original message as it was entered into the form. But the email is not at all the same as what is entered into the form originally.

Here is my mail code:

$headers = "From: $From\r\n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: $From\r\n";

mail("$addresses","$Subject","$Body","$headers");

The $Body variable is a direct catch from the form.

Shouldn't the original message end up as an email that looks exactly like the original message? Or do I need to add more to my code? Do I need to loop through the message rewriting the newlines and returns?

In anycase here is what the message looks like without me modifying the above code: (Note I replaced the /r and /n with tags to make them visible)

Discount Christian Software News 11/1/03 <http://www.DiscountChristian.com> 1-888-967-3763 {RETURN} {NEWLINE}</li> {RETURN} {NEWLINE}iLumina Gold - Live the Bible! {RETURN} {NEWLINE} {RETURN} {NEWLINE}Discount Christian Software News: {RETURN} {NEWLINE} {RETURN} {NEWLINE}in this issue: {RETURN} {NEWLINE}1. iLumina Gold {RETURN} {NEWLINE}2. Bible Explorer up to 70% off

Thanks,
Jeff