php mail() not sending chinese text correctly

[dragon52]

Hi there,

I am writing php to send email containing Chinese text. The chinese displays correctly depending on different mail servers, it seems.

I can read the chinese text if I open the email using webmail on my telco's website (Telstra's Bigpond in Australia) or Yahoo mail. If I look at the same email using MS Outlook then the chinese text is just rubbish.

So I experimented and wrote (VS2008) the code using the Smtp.Client (Microsoft System.Net.Mail ) rather then php. This method gives me the correct chinese text in both webmail and Outlook.

Can someone explain to me what is going on here?

Given I must use php, how do I reproduce smtp.client code in php?

In the php code below how much of the $Header stuff do I actually need?

Sorry for such a long winded question and thanks in advance.

Here is my codes, both php and c#

<?php
$charset = "utf-8";
$to = "$_POST[EmailAddress]";
$subject = "Student Enrollment";
$body = "尊敬的家 Welcome to the Sydney";
 
//HEADERS
$header .= "X-Mailer: Whatever you want\n";
$header .= "Return-Path: <[e-mail]>\n";
$header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\n";
$header .= "From:[e-mail]\n";
$header .= "X-Accept-Language: cn\n";
$header .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset={$charset}\n";
$header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n";
 
    if (mail($to,$subject,$body,$header))
    {
        echo("<p>A confirmation email has been sent.</p>");
    }
    else
    {
        echo("<p>We are unable to send you an email.</p>");
    }
?>
 
////////////////////////////////
 
            MailMessage mail = new MailMessage();
 
            mail.From = new MailAddress("[e-mail]");
            mail.To.Add(address);
            mail.Subject = subject;
            mail.Body = body;
 
            SmtpClient smtp = new SmtpClient("mail.bigpond.com");
            try
            {
                smtp.Send(mail);
            }

[Markus]

I suspect this is because of PHP's lax handling of Unicode characters. You might try out PHP6 as one of it's main goals is to improve multi-byte and unicode character support.


Mark.

[dragon52]

Mark,

Thanks very much for your response.

Unfortunately I don't control what version of php to use.

Since Smtp.Client in the .Net environment works do you think it will work if I write the php using smtp?

I know hardly anything about smtp. I have searched the net about smtp in php and what I have found mentions changing the configuration and seem complicated.

Can you point me to some smtp code which I can use fairly easily?

Thanks
Denis

[Dormilich]

a fairly easy (to use and well documented) PHP Mail Script is SwiftMailer, though I didn’t try sending chinese text with it.

[dragon52]

Thanks Dormilich.

SwiftMailer looks interesting. I will have a look.