Send attachments with PHP Mail()?

Question

I agree with @MihaiIorga in the comments – use the PHPMailer script. You sound like you're rejecting it because you want the easier option. Trust me, PHPMailer is the easier option by a very large margin compared to trying to do it yourself with PHP's built-in mail() function. PHP's mail() function really isn't very good.

To use PHPMailer:

• Download the PHPMailer script from here: http://github.com/PHPMailer/PHPMailer
• Extract the archive and copy the script's folder to a convenient place in your project.
• Include the main script file -- require_once('path/to/file/class.phpmailer.php');

Now, sending emails with attachments goes from being insanely difficult to incredibly easy:

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

$email = new PHPMailer();
$email->SetFrom('[email protected]', 'Your Name'); //Name is optional
$email->Subject   = 'Message Subject';
$email->Body      = $bodytext;
$email->AddAddress( '[email protected]' );

$file_to_attach = 'PATH_OF_YOUR_FILE_HERE';

$email->AddAttachment( $file_to_attach , 'NameOfFile.pdf' );

return $email->Send();

It's just that one line $email->AddAttachment(); -- you couldn't ask for any easier.

If you do it with PHP's mail() function, you'll be writing stacks of code, and you'll probably have lots of really difficult to find bugs.

You can try using the following code:

    $filename = 'myfile';
    $path = 'your path goes here';
    $file = $path . "/" . $filename;

    $mailto = '[email protected]';
    $subject = 'Subject';
    $message = 'My message';

    $content = file_get_contents($file);
    $content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));

    // a random hash will be necessary to send mixed content
    $separator = md5(time());

    // carriage return type (RFC)
    $eol = "\r\n";

    // main header (multipart mandatory)
    $headers = "From: name <[email protected]>" . $eol;
    $headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0" . $eol;
    $headers .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"" . $separator . "\"" . $eol;
    $headers .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit" . $eol;
    $headers .= "This is a MIME encoded message." . $eol;

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

    // attachment
    $body .= "--" . $separator . $eol;
    $body .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"" . $filename . "\"" . $eol;
    $body .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64" . $eol;
    $body .= "Content-Disposition: attachment" . $eol;
    $body .= $content . $eol;
    $body .= "--" . $separator . "--";

    //SEND Mail
    if (mail($mailto, $subject, $body, $headers)) {
        echo "mail send ... OK"; // or use booleans here
    } else {
        echo "mail send ... ERROR!";
        print_r( error_get_last() );
    }

Edit 14-June-2018

for more readability in some of email provider use

$body .= $eol . $message . $eol . $eol; and $body .= $eol . $content . $eol . $eol;

For PHP 5.5.27 security update

$file = $path.$filename;
$content = file_get_contents( $file);
$content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
$uid = md5(uniqid(time()));
$file_name = basename($file);

// header
$header = "From: ".$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";

// message & attachment
$nmessage = "--".$uid."\r\n";
$nmessage .= "Content-type:text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
$nmessage .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n";
$nmessage .= $message."\r\n\r\n";
$nmessage .= "--".$uid."\r\n";
$nmessage .= "Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"".$filename."\"\r\n";
$nmessage .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
$nmessage .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$file_name."\"\r\n\r\n";
$nmessage .= $content."\r\n\r\n";
$nmessage .= "--".$uid."--";

if (mail($mailto, $subject, $nmessage, $header)) {
    return true; // Or do something here
} else {
  return false;
}

Swiftmailer is another easy-to-use script that automatically protects against email injection and makes attachments a breeze. I also strongly discourage using PHP's built-in mail() function.

To use:

• Download Swiftmailer, and place the lib folder in your project
• Include the main file using require_once 'lib/swift_required.php';

Now add the code when you need to mail:

// Create the message
$message = Swift_Message::newInstance()
    ->setSubject('Your subject')
    ->setFrom(array('[email protected]' => 'Web Master'))
    ->setTo(array('[email protected]'))
    ->setBody('Here is the message itself')
    ->attach(Swift_Attachment::fromPath('myPDF.pdf'));

//send the message          
$mailer->send($message);

More information and options can be found in the Swiftmailer Docs.

To send an email with attachment we need to use the multipart/mixed MIME type that specifies that mixed types will be included in the email. Moreover, we want to use multipart/alternative MIME type to send both plain-text and HTML version of the email.Have a look at the example:

<?php 
//define the receiver of the email 
$to = '[email protected]'; 
//define the subject of the email 
$subject = 'Test email with attachment'; 
//create a boundary string. It must be unique 
//so we use the MD5 algorithm to generate a random hash 
$random_hash = md5(date('r', time())); 
//define the headers we want passed. Note that they are separated with \r\n 
$headers = "From: [email protected]\r\nReply-To: [email protected]"; 
//add boundary string and mime type specification 
$headers .= "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"PHP-mixed-".$random_hash."\""; 
//read the atachment file contents into a string,
//encode it with MIME base64,
//and split it into smaller chunks
$attachment = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents('attachment.zip'))); 
//define the body of the message. 
ob_start(); //Turn on output buffering 
?> 
--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>" 

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hello World!!! 
This is simple text email message. 

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" 
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<h2>Hello World!</h2> 
<p>This is something with <b>HTML</b> formatting.</p> 

--PHP-alt-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>-- 

--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>  
Content-Type: application/zip; name="attachment.zip"  
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64  
Content-Disposition: attachment  

<?php echo $attachment; ?> 
--PHP-mixed-<?php echo $random_hash; ?>-- 

<?php 
//copy current buffer contents into $message variable and delete current output buffer 
$message = ob_get_clean(); 
//send the email 
$mail_sent = @mail( $to, $subject, $message, $headers ); 
//if the message is sent successfully print "Mail sent". Otherwise print "Mail failed" 
echo $mail_sent ? "Mail sent" : "Mail failed"; 
?>

As you can see, sending an email with attachment is easy to accomplish. In the preceding example we have multipart/mixed MIME type, and inside it we have multipart/alternative MIME type that specifies two versions of the email. To include an attachment to our message, we read the data from the specified file into a string, encode it with base64, split it in smaller chunks to make sure that it matches the MIME specifications and then include it as an attachment.

Taken from here.