PHPMail sending attachment but they are empty

Question

Basically, I am trying to send a PDF via PHPMail. the email is sent and I receive it in outlook perfectly. the problem is that the attachment is broken and it doesnt open. I even tried sending a HTML and is also empty.

I tried researching in the forum, tried several "working codes" and other people got it working with this code... I have no clue why is not working for me. I am using the lastest version of PHPMail 5.2.2

$mail = new PHPMailer();
        $staffEmail = "staffemail";
        $mail->From = $staffEmail;
        $mail->FromName = "name";
        $mail->AddAddress('[email protected]');
        $mail->AddReplyTo($staffEmail, "name");

        $mail->AddAttachment('test.pdf');
        $mail->Subject = "PDF file attachment";

        $mail->Body = "message!";
        $mail->Send();

Answer 1

This custom PHP function will show the (beginning) PHP developer how-to build an e-mail script with attachment function. Please note that inside the mail function is no validation functionality available.

<?php
function mail_attachment($filename, $path, $mailto, $from_mail, $from_name, $replyto, $subject, $message) {
    $file = $path.$filename;
    $file_size = filesize($file);
    $handle = fopen($file, "r");
    $content = fread($handle, $file_size);
    fclose($handle);
    $content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
    $uid = md5(uniqid(time()));
    $name = basename($file);
    $header = "From: ".$from_name." <".$from_mail.">\r\n";
    $header .= "Reply-To: ".$replyto."\r\n";
    $header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
    $header .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$uid."\"\r\n\r\n";
    $header .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n";
    $header .= "--".$uid."\r\n";
    $header .= "Content-type:text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
    $header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n";
    $header .= $message."\r\n\r\n";
    $header .= "--".$uid."\r\n";
    $header .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$filename."\"\r\n"; // use different content types here
    $header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
    $header .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$filename."\"\r\n\r\n";
    $header .= $content."\r\n\r\n";
    $header .= "--".$uid."--";
    if (mail($mailto, $subject, "", $header)) {
        echo "mail send ... OK"; // or use booleans here
    } else {
        echo "mail send ... ERROR!";
    }
}
?>

Next we show an example on how-to use this function to send an e-mail message with one attached zip file:

<?php    $my_file = "somefile.zip";
    $my_path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT']."/your_path_here/";
    $my_name = "Olaf Lederer";
    $my_mail = "[email protected]";
    $my_replyto = "[email protected]";
    $my_subject = "This is a mail with attachment.";
    $my_message = "Hallo,\r\ndo you like this script? I hope it will help.\r\n\r\ngr. Olaf";
    mail_attachment($my_file, $my_path, "[email protected]", $my_mail, $my_name, $my_replyto, $my_subject, $my_message);
?>

Are you looking for a script to send multiple attachments? Try our mail attachment class script.

If you like to send your websites mail messages via SMTP and Gmail, check our PHPMailer tutorial, too.

Answer 2

I suggest you to upload the file to the server and then attach it to the email. For example, you can use the following steps :

1. Upload the file
2. Attach it to the email
3. Send the email
4. Delete this temporary file from the server

Try this because I think thats the reason of your poblem.

Just in case: http://php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php

Good luck

Answer 3

There can be two problems either path is not correct for attachment or php dont have permission on that folder