[RESOLVED] New lines in email stripped from MySQL

sogo

My application uses the mail() function which gets the body message from a MySQL column of text type. When the mail is sent, all new lines are stripped and I end up with the message all bunched up in one long line. Putting \n in the text only displays it literally with no effect. Is this a configuration issue or something else?. Here documents displays fine tho. Any pointers will be most appreciated.

Piranha

[man]nl2br[/man] is a good function. I don't know for sure if it solves your problem though.

sogo

I did come across nl2br but I am only sending plain text emails. nl2br has the same effect as when I put \n in the text field. <br/> gets printed in the email message. I did put in a markers like <-br-> in the text and used str_replace to put in the stolen \n quite successfully. But it dont feel good 🙁

bradgrafelman

The problem probably happens when you insert data into the database. Are you using [man]mysql_real_escape_string/man on the data before inserting it?

Protato

sogo wrote:
I did come across nl2br but I am only sending plain text emails. nl2br has the same effect as when I put \n in the text field. <br/> gets printed in the email message. I did put in a markers like <-br-> in the text and used str_replace to put in the stolen \n quite successfully. But it dont feel good 🙁

Without setting the header for a html email, the <br> will be displayed literally. Use the nl2br function to convert you newline characters to html breaks, then set a header and pass it to the mail function

$headers = "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\n";
mail($to_email, $subject, $body, $headers);

sogo

My application should send out only a few lines of plain text emails, and I am avoiding html to ease processing later down the line. I have had another go at str_replace, but this time replacing a single "\n" with "\n\n". This works, but I still do not know where and when the new lines are stripped. I will mark this as resolved but will investigate further and post my findings here. Many thanks for your help.