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.