PHP Email: Using Embedded Images in HTML Email

PHP Email Tutorial: We ever talk how about send email with attachment. Now, in this post, we want to send email where there is images in there as embedded images. Usually, you get this kind of email from newsletter. So, after read this post, you can build your own newsletter.

Before we write line codes, we must understand following anatomy of email that use embedded images:

After it, It is easy for us to understand this code:

 <?php
 // Setting a timezone, mail() uses this.
 date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');
  // recipients
 $to  = "you@phpeveryday.com" . ", " ; // note the comma 
 $to .= "we@phpeveryday.com"; 

  // subject 
 $subject = "Test for Embedded Image & Attachement"; 

 // Create a boundary string.  It needs to be unique 
 $sep = sha1(date('r', time()));

 // Add in our content boundary, and mime type specification:  
 $headers .=
    "\r\nContent-Type: multipart/mixed; 
     boundary=\"PHP-mixed-{$sep}\"";

 // Read in our file attachment
 $attachment = file_get_contents('attachment.zip');
 $encoded = base64_encode($attachment);
 $attached = chunk_split($encoded);

 // additional headers
 $headers .= "To: You <you@phpeveryday.com>, 
             We <we@phpeveryday.com>\r\n"; 
 $headers .= "From: Me \r\n"; 
 $headers .= "Cc: he@phpeveryday.com\r\n"; 
 $headers .= "Bcc: she@phpeveryday.com\r\n";

 $inline = chunk_split(base64_encode(
           file_get_contents('mypicture.gif')));

 // Your message here:
 $body =<<<EOBODY
 --PHP-mixed-{$sep}
 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; 
               boundary="PHP-alt-{$sep}"

 --PHP-alt-{$sep}
 Content-Type: text/plain

 Hai, It's me!


 --PHP-alt-{$sep}
 Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="PHP-related-{$sep}"

 --PHP-alt-{$sep}
 Content-Type: text/html

 <html>
 <head>
 <title>Test HTML Mail</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <font color='red'>Hai, it is me!</font>
 Here is my picture: 
  <img src="cid:PHP-CID-{$sep}" />
 </body>
 </html>
 
 --PHP-related-{$sep}
 Content-Type: image/gif
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
 Content-ID: <PHP-CID-{$sep}> 
 
 {$inline}
 --PHP-related-{$sep}--
 
 --PHP-alt-{$sep}--

 --PHP-mixed-{$sep}
 Content-Type: application/zip; name="attachment.zip"
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
 Content-Disposition: attachment

 {$attached}

 --PHP-mixed-{$sep}--
 EOBODY;
 
 // Finally, send the email
 mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers);
 ?>