How to use TCPDF with PHP mail function

Question

$to = '[email protected]';
$subject = 'Receipt';
$repEmail = '[email protected]';

$fileName = 'receipt.pdf';
$fileatt = $pdf->Output($fileName, 'E');
$attachment = chunk_split($fileatt);
$eol = PHP_EOL;
$separator = md5(time());

$headers = 'From: Sender <'.$repEmail.'>'.$eol;
$headers .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' .$eol;
$headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$separator."\"";

$message = "--".$separator.$eol;
$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit".$eol.$eol;
$message .= "This is a MIME encoded message.".$eol;

$message .= "--".$separator.$eol;
$message .= "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"".$eol;
$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit".$eol.$eol;

$message .= "--".$separator.$eol;
$message .= "Content-Type: application/pdf; name=\"".$fileName."\"".$eol; 
$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64".$eol;
$message .= "Content-Disposition: attachment".$eol.$eol;
$message .= $attachment.$eol;
$message .= "--".$separator."--";

if (mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers)){
$action = 'action=Receipt%20Sent';
header('Location: ../index.php?'.$action);
}

else {
$action = 'action=Send%20Failed';
header('Location: ../index.php?'.$action);
}

I have been using TCPDF for a short amount of time now to generate PDF files from forms. It works quite well and that part of the PHP has not changed. Now I want to send those PDF files to my email account.

The emailing is actually working with this coding and attaching a PDF. The issue is that it is simply a blank PDF at rough 100 bytes in size. Which of course is not a valid PDF nor does it have anything to do with the responses from the form.

I am really not familiar with the attaching of files to an email in PHP and any help resolving this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Update

Since it seems like several people are looking at this still I will post my current solution. It involves downloading PHPMailer as suggested below. I have started at the output line for TCPDF.

$attachment = $makepdf->Output('filename.pdf', 'S');
SENDmail($attachment);

function SENDmail($pdf) {
require_once('phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php');
$mailer = new PHPMailer();

$mailer->AddReplyTo('[email protected]', 'Reply To');
$mailer->SetFrom('[email protected]', 'Sent From');
$mailer->AddReplyTo('[email protected]', 'Reply To');
$mailer->AddAddress('[email protected]', 'Send To');
$mailer->Subject = 'Message with PDF';
$mailer->AltBody = "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer";
$mailer->MsgHTML('<p>Message contents</p>'));
if ($pdf) {$mailer->AddStringAttachment($pdf, 'filename.pdf');}

$mailer->Send();
}

Answer 1

You have two choices. You can save the PDF to a file and attach the file or else output it as a string. I find the string output is preferable:

$pdfString = $pdf->Output('dummy.pdf', 'S');

The file name is ignored since it just returns the encoded string. Now you can include the string in your email. I prefer to use PHPMailer when working with attachments like this. Use the AddStringAttachment method of PHPMailer to accomplish this:

$mailer->AddStringAttachment($pdfString, 'some_filename.pdf');