PHP broken email

There are cases when an email might end up showing the headers inside the email's body. This means that headers are usually.

We had a big headache with a PHP project lately as all the emails were broken ("butchered" as someone said).

Here is how a test the email looked like:

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Message-Id: <...........>
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 10:52:35 +0300 (EEST)
From: root@snow.zzzptoid.com (root)




Yes, a simple HTML email test

Now we took a look at the raw email and here is what we saw:

Received: (qmail 9464 invoked from network); 17 May 2010 07:51:47 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO m1pismtp01-011.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net) ([10.8.12.11])
          (envelope-sender )
          by p3plsmtp03-04.prod.phx3.secureserver.net (qmail-1.03) with SMTP
          for ; 17 May 2010 07:51:47 -0000
X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AqoFAAiS8EtZLcluX2dsb2JhbACRfQEBixsDbB5IvwkEiQ8
Received: from pc110.fx-net.ro (HELO snow.zzzptoid.com) ([89.45.201.120])
  by m1pismtp01-011.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net with ESMTP; 17 May 2010 00:51:46 -0700
Received: by snow.zzzptoid.com (Postfix, from userid 0)
 id 2FF74F04FB; Mon, 17 May 2010 10:52:35 +0300 (EEST)
To: alex@zzzptoid.com
Subject: Test HTML email
X-PHP-Originating-Script: 0:testSendEmail.php
X-Nonspam: Statistical 50%

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Message-Id: <...>
Date: Mon, 17 May 2010 10:52:35 +0300 (EEST)
From: root@snow.zzzptoid.com (root)


Yes, a simple HTML email test

Now the problem were those 3 lines :

X-Nonspam: Statistical 50%

MIME-Version: 1.0

There should be no blank line between headers as the email parser will believe that the headers are done and the content is starting.

Where do those extra line coming from? They are added by PHP for any email sent, so we need to remove them; and they are added the wrong way - introducing an unnecessary blank line.

Go to php.ini and set mail.add_x_headers to off:

mail.add_x_headers = Off

Now restart you Apache and let me know if it's working :)

Carriage return and Line feed

If I work too much under Linux (x)or Windows and I want to switch to the other operating system I bump into the new line issue.

Here are the actors:

CR - carriage return, ASCII code 10 (or \r) - means that the printer carriage should return at the beginning of the line

LF - line feed, ASCII code 13 (or \n) - means that the printer carriage should be move on next line.

New line - whenever you need to move to a new line (in console or editor)


Windows and Linux treat that new line differently:

Window - the new line is made out of a CR and LF so actually the code for new line is CR+LF (\r\n)

Linux - the new line is a simple line feed = LF (\n)