sending the contents of a php array in a html email

Hi,

I'm creating a site that posts orders to an email address when they're
submitted, these orders need to be in the form of official invoices so
i'm using HTML to format them.

I already have a shopping basket system which adds all of the totals
up and puts them into a nice looking invoice.

What's the best way to take this HTML and put it into an email?
I'm really looking for a way of sending the page via email, like you
can do in IE by selecting File > Send > Page by Email.

The basket script is quite large and i'm trying to avoid running it
more times than neccesary.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

re: sending the contents of a php array in a html email

Ian N wrote:[color=blue]
> Hi,
>
> I'm creating a site that posts orders to an email address when they're
> submitted, these orders need to be in the form of official invoices so
> i'm using HTML to format them.
>
> I already have a shopping basket system which adds all of the totals
> up and puts them into a nice looking invoice.
>
> What's the best way to take this HTML and put it into an email?
> I'm really looking for a way of sending the page via email, like you
> can do in IE by selecting File > Send > Page by Email.
>
> The basket script is quite large and i'm trying to avoid running it
> more times than neccesary.
>
> Any advice would be greatly appreciated.[/color]

This depends on a few things. Will your cart be printing each invoice
to a static HTML file, or will it be displaying a dynamic page?

This is the basics for doing it from a static page:

-if it's in a static HTML file. Use file() function to read the file
into an array by line number.
-Use foreach() statement to iterate the array into a string
-use the mail() function to send the email.
<?php
$message = "";
foreach(@file($fileLocation) as $lineText) {
$message .= $lineText . "\n";
}
mail($to,$subject,$message,$additional_headers) or die("Message
didn't send");
?>

The basics of doing it from a dynamic page:

-set up your cart to write the invoice to a string variable. This can
be quite difficult to do, but you'll have to read through the code, and
then use that string variable in the mail() function.

References:
Filesystem Functions => http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.filesystem.php
mail() Function => http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

--TekWiz

re: sending the contents of a php array in a html email

Ian N wrote:[color=blue]
>
> I already have a shopping basket system which adds all of
> the totals up and puts them into a nice looking invoice.
>
> What's the best way to take this HTML and put it into an email?[/color]

There's is a quick two-step fix for that:

1. Insert ob_start() before the first output statement.
2. After the last output statement, insert something like
this:

$html = ob_get_clean();

Now the entire output of your script is captured in the
$html variable. To output it to the client, you can

echo $html;

To e-mail it... well, that depends on your mail setup.
If you have PHPMailer and you send mail via mail(), all
you need to do is:

require("class.phpmailer.php");
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->IsMail();
$mail->From = "you@yourdomain.com";
$mail->FromName = "Mailer";
$mail->AddAddress("they@theirdomain.com", "Firstname Lastname");
$mail->IsHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = "Invoice";
$mail->Body = $html;
if(!$mail->Send()) {
// write an entry to an error log...
}

For more information on PHPMailer, see:

http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/

Cheers,
NC

re: sending the contents of a php array in a html email

NC wrote:[color=blue]
> Ian N wrote:
>[color=green]
>>I already have a shopping basket system which adds all of
>>the totals up and puts them into a nice looking invoice.
>>
>>What's the best way to take this HTML and put it into an email?[/color]
>
>
> There's is a quick two-step fix for that:
>
> 1. Insert ob_start() before the first output statement.
> 2. After the last output statement, insert something like
> this:
>
> $html = ob_get_clean();
>
> Now the entire output of your script is captured in the
> $html variable. To output it to the client, you can
>
> echo $html;
>
> To e-mail it... well, that depends on your mail setup.
> If you have PHPMailer and you send mail via mail(), all
> you need to do is:
>
> require("class.phpmailer.php");
> $mail = new PHPMailer();
> $mail->IsMail();
> $mail->From = "you@yourdomain.com";
> $mail->FromName = "Mailer";
> $mail->AddAddress("they@theirdomain.com", "Firstname Lastname");
> $mail->IsHTML(true);
> $mail->Subject = "Invoice";
> $mail->Body = $html;
> if(!$mail->Send()) {
> // write an entry to an error log...
> }
>
> For more information on PHPMailer, see:
>
> http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/
>
> Cheers,
> NC
>[/color]

I'm glad to now know about the Output Buffering functions. That's a
good thing to know.

But what if PHP is embedded into HTML code? How can that HTML code be
obtained?

--TekWiz

re: sending the contents of a php array in a html email

TekWiz wrote:[color=blue]
> NC wrote:[color=green]
> > Ian N wrote:
> >[color=darkred]
> > >What's the best way to take this HTML and put it into an email?[/color]
> >
> > There's is a quick two-step fix for that:
> >
> > 1. Insert ob_start() before the first output statement.
> > 2. After the last output statement, insert something like
> > this:
> >
> > $html = ob_get_clean();
> >
> > Now the entire output of your script is captured in the
> > $html variable. To output it to the client, you can
> >
> > echo $html;[/color]
>
> But what if PHP is embedded into HTML code?[/color]

Doesn't matter. Output buffering captures ALL output,
regardless of whether it was done via PHP output statements
or by switching out of PHP into HTML.

Try this simple script:

<?php ob_start(); ?>

<html>
<head>
<title>Test</title>
</head>
<body>
<p><?php echo 'Today is ', date('F d, Y'); ?></p>
</body>
</html>

<?php
$html = ob_get_clean();
echo '<pre>', htmlentities($html), '</pre>';
?>

and you will see that HTML was captured just like the
output of echo()...

Cheers,
NC

re: sending the contents of a php array in a html email

"NC" <nc@iname.com> wrote in message news:<1111290415.289536.16570@z14g2000cwz.googlegr oups.com>...[color=blue]
> TekWiz wrote:[color=green]
> > NC wrote:[color=darkred]
> > > Ian N wrote:
> > >
> > > >What's the best way to take this HTML and put it into an email?
> > >
> > > There's is a quick two-step fix for that:
> > >
> > > 1. Insert ob_start() before the first output statement.
> > > 2. After the last output statement, insert something like
> > > this:
> > >
> > > $html = ob_get_clean();
> > >
> > > Now the entire output of your script is captured in the
> > > $html variable. To output it to the client, you can
> > >
> > > echo $html;[/color]
> >
> > But what if PHP is embedded into HTML code?[/color]
>
> Doesn't matter. Output buffering captures ALL output,
> regardless of whether it was done via PHP output statements
> or by switching out of PHP into HTML.
>
> Try this simple script:
>
> <?php ob_start(); ?>
>
> <html>
> <head>
> <title>Test</title>
> </head>
> <body>
> <p><?php echo 'Today is ', date('F d, Y'); ?></p>
> </body>
> </html>
>
> <?php
> $html = ob_get_clean();
> echo '<pre>', htmlentities($html), '</pre>';
> ?>
>
> and you will see that HTML was captured just like the
> output of echo()...
>
> Cheers,
> NC[/color]

Hi Thanks for the responses, unfortunatly the server i'm using is
running PHP version 4.12 and this function is only valid for 4.30 +
accoring to the php.net site, any other suggestions?