PHP E-Mail Encoding?

Question

I am having some trouble with foreign characters when sending an e-mail. Could someone advise me on what to do? I suspect the problem could be one of three things.

Answer 1

You didn’t specify the type and encoding of your content. Try this:

$headerFields = array(
    "From: {$visitor_email}",
    "MIME-Version: 1.0",
    "Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8"
);
$mail_sent = mail($client_email, $title, $message, implode("\r\n", $headerFields));

Answer 2

Use a PHP mail wrapper, it will save your sanity (speaking from experience here). For example, PHPMailer allows you to set outgoing e-mail encoding and builds the message for you.

Also, use UTF-8; it's almost universally supported nowadays and covers all the characters you would ever need.

Answer 3

As far as I know PHP does not support UTF-8 as default encoding for its strings. You need to use the relevant encoding/handling functions for the encoding you would prefer.

Also add a Content-Type:text/html;charset=utf-8 to your email headers so the email clients will display the characters correctly (or replace with your encoding of choice).

Answer 4

I use this code to solve the problem with greek encode in old Horde mail.

$headers = 'From: ' . $youremail . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'To: ' . $to . "\r\n";    
$headers .= 'Return-Path: ' . $youremail . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'MIME-Version: 1.0' ."\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-Type: text/HTML; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit'. "\n\r\n";
$headers .= $message . "\r\n";

mail('', 'Request from Site yoursite', '', $headers);

Answer 5

In addition to what was said earlier, it is not mandatory to send the mail in HTML to be able to use UTF-8, you may also format it as simple text in the headers:

'Content-Type: text/plain;charset=utf-8'

Answer 6

Use this code

function mail_send($arr)
{
    if (!isset($arr['to_email'], $arr['from_email'], $arr['subject'], $arr['message'])) {
        throw new HelperException('mail(); not all parameters provided.');
    }

    $to      = empty($arr['to_name']) ? $arr['to_email'] : '"' . mb_encode_mimeheader($arr['to_name']) . '" <' . $arr['to_email'] . '>';
    $from    = empty($arr['from_name']) ? $arr['from_email'] : '"' . mb_encode_mimeheader($arr['from_name']) . '" <' . $arr['from_email'] . '>';

    $headers = array
    (
        'MIME-Version: 1.0',
        'Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8";',
        'Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit',
        'Date: ' . date('r', $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME']),
        'Message-ID: <' . $_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME'] . md5($_SERVER['REQUEST_TIME']) . '@' . $_SERVER['SERVER_NAME'] . '>',
        'From: ' . $from,
        'Reply-To: ' . $from,
        'Return-Path: ' . $from,
        'X-Mailer: PHP v' . phpversion(),
        'X-Originating-IP: ' . $_SERVER['SERVER_ADDR'],
    );

    mail($to, '=?UTF-8?B?' . base64_encode($arr['subject']) . '?=', $arr['message'], implode("\n", $headers));
}

from:http://php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php