6.0.0-beta13
4/21/26
  • How to use the MIME API

[[toc]]

++ Creating MIME messages

Scenario: We have a text block (such as text/calendar data) which needs to be added as a MIME part to an email message. We then need to add a couple of additional headers to this message and finally read it back as a string.

For Message Body:

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Message.php';

$message = new MIME_Message();

$part = new MIME_Part('text/plain', $message_text);

$message->addPart($part);

For text/calendar attachment:

$part = new MIME_Part('text/calendar', $text_calendar_data);

$message->addPart($part);

For Headers:

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Headers.php';

$headers = new MIME_Headers();

$headers->addHeader('Header 1', $Header_1_Value);

$headers->addHeader('Header 2', $Header_2_Value);

$headers->addMIMEHeaders($message);

To return the message as a string:

$string = $headers->toString() . "\n\n" . $message->toString();

++ Creating and Sending E-Mail with an attachment by using the MIME_Mail class

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Mail.php';

// New Horde MIME_Mail Object

$mail = new MIME_Mail();

// Set the header date

$mail->addHeader('Date', date('r'));

// Set the from address

$mail->addHeader('From', 'sender@example.com');

// Set the subject of the mail

$mail->addHeader('Subject', 'Horde MIME_Mail example');

// Set the text message body

$mail->setBody('Example MIME message with an attachment');

// Add the file as an attachment, set the file name and what kind of file it is.

$mail->addAttachment('/tmp/some_file.zip', 'some_file.zip', 'application/x-zip-compressed');

// Add recipients

$mail->addRecipients('recipient@example.com');

// Get the mail driver

$mail_driver = $conf['mailer']['type'];

$mail_params = $conf['mailer']['params'];

if ($mail_driver == 'smtp' && $mail_params['auth'] &&

empty($mail_params['username'])) {

if (Auth::getAuth()) {

    $mail_params['username'] = Auth::getAuth();

    $mail_params['password'] = Auth::getCredential('password');

}

}

// Send the mail

if (!is_a($sent = $mail->send($mail_driver, $mail_params), 'PEAR_Error')) {

print "E-Mail sent\n";

} else {

print "E-Mail not sent\n";

}

++ Parsing a MIME message

Scenario: We have an existing text string which contains a valid MIME email message. We need to parse this string in order to read back the body of a specific MIME part with a certain content type.

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Structure.php';

$message = MIME_Structure::parseTextMIMEMessage($message_text);

If you have access to the mail server, you can also use:

$structure = @imap_fetchstructure($stream, $uid, FT_UID);

$message = MIME_Structure::parse($structure);

To determine the structure of the MIME message, e.g. to find out the MIME ID we are looking for:

$map = $message->contentTypeMap();

{{$map}} is an array with key being the MIME IDs and values being the Content Types of that IDs.

To retrieve a certain MIME part of the message:

$part = $message->getPart($mime_id);

The following code snippets require at least Horde 3.2.

To retrieve the body text:

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Contents.php';

$contents = new MIME_Contents($message);

$body_id = $contents->findBody();

if ($body_id) {

$part = &$contents->getMIMEPart($body_id);

$body = $part->transferDecode();

} else {

$body = 'Could not render body of message.';

}

To retrieve a list of all attachments:

$attachments = $contents->getAttachmentContents();

foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {

echo 'Attachment ' . htmlspecialchars($attachment['name']) . ' is ' . strlen($attachment['data']) . ' bytes long.';

}

If you don't retrieve all attachments as expected, in particular if any attached mail/rfc822 parts are returned empty, apply the patch {{mimeDecode.php.patch}} that has been attached to this wiki page to the file {{Mail/mimeDecode.php}} in your PEAR directory.

++ Using MIME Viewers

Scenario: Continuing the previous example we want to render the text/calendar part to HTML. ''This code currently only works inside of a Horde application because it relies on the registry and Horde's configuration files.''

require HORDE_BASE . '/config/mime_drivers.php';

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Viewer.php';

$viewer = MIME_Viewer::factory($part);

$html = $viewer->render();

++ Reading message headers

+++ Using a mail server connection

Scenario: We want to read a certain message from a certain message on the mail server, for example to search for messages with a known header.

/* Load libraries. */

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Headers.php';

require_once 'Horde/NLS.php';

/* Custom MIME_Headers class because we need to implement _getStream(). */

class MyHeaders extends MIME_Headers {

function _getStream()

{

    return imap_open('{localhost/imap}INBOX', 'username', 'password');

}

}

/* Get message subject. */

$headers = new MyHeaders($message_uid);

$headers->buildHeaders();

$subject = $headers->getValue('Subject');

+++ Using a header text

If the headers can't be received from an IMAP server or already are available as a string, this alternative approach could be used:

$headerText = 'Return-Path: john@example.com

Message-ID: 20080228160832.604925ntqxdo4o00@example.com

Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:08:32 +0100

From: John Doe john@example.com

To: jane@example.com

Subject: Some Subject';

/* Load libraries. */

require_once 'Horde/MIME/Structure.php';

/* Get message subject. */

$headers = MIME_Structure::parseMIMEHeaders($headerText);

$subject = $headers['Subject'];

++ Complete example script

This is a complete example script that parses all messages of an INBOX for any CSV attachments, extract these attachments from the messages, saves them in a folder, and deletes the parsed message. The script can also be downloaded from the AttachedFiles area of this page.

#!/usr/bin/php

type != 1) { continue; } /* Parse message structure. */ $body = imap_fetchheader($imap, $uid, FT_UID) . imap_body($imap, $uid, FT_UID); $message = MIME_Structure::parseTextMIMEMessage($body); $map = $message->contentTypeMap(); /* Search for message with possible CSV attachment. */ foreach ($map as $mime_id => $mime_type) { if (!in_array($mime_type, $csv_mimetypes)) { continue; } $mime_part = $message->getPart($mime_id); $filename = $mime_part->getName(true); if (String::lower(substr($filename, -4)) != '.csv') { continue; } /* CSV file found. */ $content = $mime_part->transferDecode(); /* Get message subject. */ $headers = new MyHeaders($uid); $headers->buildHeaders(); $subject = $headers->getValue('Subject'); if (empty($subject)) { $subject = $filename; } else { $subject .= '.csv'; } /* Find unique file name. */ $filename = preg_replace('/[^a-z0-9_\-\.]/i', '_', $subject); while (file_exists($target_dir . $filename)) { if (preg_match($regexp, $filename, $match)) { $filename = preg_replace($regexp, '_' . ($match[1] + 1) . '.csv', $filename); } else { $filename = substr($filename, 0, -4) . '_1.csv'; } } /* Write CSV file. */ $fp = fopen($target_dir . $filename, 'w'); if (!$fp) { exit("Can't open file '" . $target_dir . $filename . "' for writing.\n"); } fwrite($fp, $content); fclose($fp); /* Delete message. */ imap_delete($imap, $uid, FT_UID); } } /* Purge and close mailbox. */ // imap_expunge($imap); imap_close($imap); error_out();