MIME Email Formatting?

phpjen

Ok so I finally figure out my form letter but I'm still having a formatting issue. When I submit the form and send to my aol.com test email address everything looks fantastic. When I send it to my regular email address off my domain it come over in text showing all the html code. I'm using Outlook 2007 to view that email and the aol email.

Just for background purposes... This form collects a date (the variable) and enters it into an HTML file. Then it sends the merged results to the email entered into the form.

Here is the code:

<title>Send Guest Welcome Letter</title>
<body background="http://www.scrappalace.com/images/clouds.gif">
<form action="welcomeletter.php" method="post">


<p>Retreat Date:
<input type="text" name="retreatdate" value="<?php echo $retreatdate ?>">

Guest Email:
<input type="text" name="guestemail" value="<?php echo $guestemail ?>">
<input name="submit" type="submit" value="Send Email">
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  </p>
</form>
<p>
<?php
// Reads all the lines of the file into an array and
// then joins the lines into one variable
$contents = join("", file("welcome.html"));
// Do one line like this for each variable
$contents = str_replace("%%retreatdate%%", $retreatdate, $contents);

print "$contents";
$msg .= "$contents";

$sender = "me@me.com";

$subject = "Guest Welcome Letter";
//mail headers
$mailheaders = "From: Me <me@me.com> \n";
$mailheaders .= "Reply-To: $sender\n\n";
mail($guestemail, $subject, $msg, $mailheaders);
?>

Can anyone help me wrap this up? I haven't done this stuff in years and I'm lucky I got this far!!!

Thanks!!
Jen

bpat1434

I'd suggest maybe looking at swfitmailer ( www.swiftmailer.org ) as an alternative as it can automatically add HTML mail and Text mail. It's what I use, and I have to say it's nice.

The only issues I see with yours is that you don't split the content up by mime-parts, and you don't use full HTML (which you should). Your HTML section should be just like any HTML page (including the <!DOCTYPE and <html> items) all wrapped in a MIME part.

Hope that helps.

NogDog

I concur with everything Bpat wrote (as usual). If you want to do it yourself, you need to set the mime type in the headers. See example 1110 on the mail() page for outputting HTML type mail.

phpjen

Well I've gotten a little closer with your help, but the formatting in both the aol.com mail and my regular server email is still off. The aol mail looks FANTASTIC. My regular email from my server shows all the html.

I used the example you sent me to and the problem I have is that the HTML output varies based on the variable entered. So my message line just equals the document results with the variable entered. ($contents)

Here is how I've edited the code thus far:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head><title>Send Guest Welcome Letter</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<body>
<body background="http://www.scrappalace.com/images/clouds.gif">
<form action="welcomeletter.php" method="post">


<p>Retreat Date:
<input type="text" name="retreatdate" value="<?php echo $retreatdate ?>">

Guest Email:
<input type="text" name="guestemail" value="<?php echo $guestemail ?>">
<input name="submit" type="submit" value="Send Email">
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>  </p>
</form>
</body>
</html>
<?php
// Reads all the lines of the file into an array and
// then joins the lines into one variable
$contents = join("", file("welcome.html"));

// Do one line like this for each variable
$contents = str_replace("%%retreatdate%%", $retreatdate, $contents);

print "$contents";
$msg .= "$contents";

//$sender = "jen@scrapbookhut.com";

$subject = "Guest Welcome Letter";
//mail headers
$headers = "From: Scrap Palace of Romeo <jen@scrapbookhut.com> \n";
$headers .= "Reply-To: $sender\n\n";
$headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
mail($guestemail, $subject, $msg, $headers);
?>

So what am I still doing wrong?? You can see what I'm trying to get at by checking here: http://www.scrapbookhut.com/welcome/welcomeletter.php

I'm beyond frustrated at this point. 🙁 Not to mention feeing pretty stupid.

Thanks for the help!!