<?php
/* Email Detials */
	$mail_to = "<receipient address>";
	$from_mail = "<sender address>";
	$from_name = "<sender name>";
	$reply_to = "<reply-to address>";
	$subject = "<email subject>";
	$message = "<email content>";

/* Attachment File */
	// Attachment location
	$file_name = "<attachment file name>";
	$path = "<relative path/absolute path which contains the attachment>";
	
	// Read the file content
	$file = $path.$file_name;
	$file_size = filesize($file);
	$handle = fopen($file, "r");
	$content = fread($handle, $file_size);
	fclose($handle);
	$content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
	
/* Set the email header */
	// Generate a boundary
	$boundary = md5(uniqid(time()));
	
	// Email header
	$header = "From: ".$from_name." <".$from_mail.">\r\n";
	$header .= "Reply-To: ".$reply_to."\r\n";
	$header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
	
	// Multipart wraps the Email Content and Attachment
	$header .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"".$boundary."\"\r\n";
	$header .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n";
	$header .= "--".$boundary."\r\n";
	
	// Email content
	// Content-type can be text/plain or text/html
	$header .= "Content-type:text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n";
	$header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n\r\n";
	$header .= "$message\r\n";
	$header .= "--".$boundary."\r\n";
	
	// Attachment
	// Edit content type for different file extensions
	$header .= "Content-Type: application/xml; name=\"".$file_name."\"\r\n";
	$header .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
	$header .= "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"".$file_name."\"\r\n\r\n";
	$header .= $content."\r\n";
	$header .= "--".$boundary."--";
	
	// Send email
	if (mail($mail_to, $subject, "", $header)) {
		echo "Sent";
	} else {
		echo "Error";
	}
?>

24 thoughts on “PHP – Send Attachment with PHP mail()”

1. Pingback: Configure Postfix/Sendmail for PHP mail() in Ubuntu | Eureka!

2. Asanka April 28, 2011 at 07:10

   thanks , this code works. good job

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorApril 28, 2011 at 10:26

      you are welcome =)

      Reply ↓
      1. ynre August 12, 2011 at 15:28

         Why the in my attachment it comes .Dat the extension name.
      2. ykyuen Post authorAugust 12, 2011 at 19:50

         can’t get what u mean, can you elaborate more?
3. dah June 9, 2011 at 21:37

   Thunks, good code. but if the mime is on text/html?

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorJune 9, 2011 at 21:48

      you want to change the mime header? i didn’t quite get what u mean?

      Reply ↓
4. Kanhai Lal July 7, 2011 at 14:27

   this is working
   Thank you !!

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorJuly 7, 2011 at 14:41

      You are welcome =D

      Reply ↓
5. Varadha August 16, 2011 at 19:01

   Its works fine. Thanks.

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorAugust 22, 2011 at 19:15

      great =)

      Reply ↓
6. Jitendra Purohit September 4, 2011 at 21:19

   Fantastic Article… I really searched a lot and also tried a lot of codes but they just were not working. I needed to send an image as an attachment with an email to the member of the website. Real good effort there!!!

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorSeptember 5, 2011 at 00:10

      Thanks for your comment~ glad to know that my post could help~ =D

      Reply ↓
7. sumesh October 8, 2011 at 14:10

   my wrapping makes a problem with this code it shows only the empty attachments file and no content in the body of the mail

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorOctober 10, 2011 at 12:55

      can u post ur code here?

      Reply ↓
8. Ksdsp January 3, 2012 at 17:36

   BAD look in ms outlook

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorJanuary 4, 2012 at 21:05

      maybe you could try PHPMailer.

      Reply ↓
9. Molik Jain February 20, 2012 at 02:52

   its not working with me, don’t know why?
   showing error.
   what to do?

   but when I use sendmail on terminal, it dispatches email and takes to spam

   also in php.ini the path to sendmail is already given correctly on my linux machine

   mail with attachment will be a good thing, but for now I want the simple mails to work in php without attachments and then I am sure mails without attachments will also go out.

   can you help me please

   Reply ↓
   1. ykyuen Post authorFebruary 20, 2012 at 17:16

      Hi Molik,

      First of all, what error did you get? can you post it here?

      Second, if you find that the outgoing emails were treated as SPAM. most likely the domain is not in the email whitelist. Actually setup an email server is quite complicated and i dun have much experience on that. If you dun mind using gmail as a relay, i would suggest you read the following post.
      Postfix – Relay via Gmail

      I dun know if your server is using Sendmail/Postfix. In my experience, Postfix is more user friendly.

      Hope the above information could help.

      Kit

      Reply ↓
10. Benji August 17, 2012 at 08:09

    Best script i’ve seen so far, smooth and easy
    Great job, man

    Reply ↓
11. karmaprod November 3, 2012 at 23:08

    I couldn’t have it working until I changed all those “$header” to “$message”. Here it is my working code:

    <?php
    // http://eureka.ykyuen.info/2010/02/16/php-send-attachmemt-with-php-mail/
    /* Email Detials */
    	$mail_to = "";
    	$from_mail = "";
    	$from_name = "";
    	$reply_to = "";
    	$subject = "";
    	$message = "";
    
    /* Attachment File */
    	// Attachment location
    	$file_name = "";
    	$path = "";
    	
    	// Read the file content
    	$file = $path.$file_name;
    	$file_size = filesize($file);
    	$handle = fopen($file, "r");
    	$content = fread($handle, $file_size);
    	fclose($handle);
    	$content = chunk_split(base64_encode($content));
    	
    /* Set the email header */
    	// Generate a boundary
    	$boundary = md5(uniqid(time()));
    	
    	// Email header
    	$header = "From: ".$from_name." \r\n";
    	$header .= "Reply-To: ".$reply_to."\r\n";
    	$header .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n";
    	
    	// Multipart wraps the Email Content and Attachment
    	$header .= "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;\r\n";
    	$header .= " boundary=\"".$boundary."\"";
    
    	$message .= "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n\r\n";
    	$message .= "--".$boundary."\r\n";
    	
    	// Email content
    	// Content-type can be text/plain or text/html
    	$message .= "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\r\n";
    	$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit\r\n";
    	$message .= "\r\n";
    	$message .= "$message_body\r\n";
    	$message .= "--".$boundary."\r\n";
    	
    	// Attachment
    	// Edit content type for different file extensions
    	$message .= "Content-Type: application/xml;\r\n";
    	$message .= " name=\"".$file_name."\"\r\n";
    	$message .= "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\r\n";
    	$message .= "Content-Disposition: attachment;\r\n";
    	$message .= " filename=\"".$file_name."\"\r\n";
    	$message .= "\r\n".$content."\r\n";
    	$message .= "--".$boundary."--\r\n";
    	
    	// Send email
    	if (mail($mail_to, $subject, $message, $header)) {
    		echo "Sent";
    	} else {
    		echo "Error";
    	}
    ?>
    

    Reply ↓
    1. ykyuen Post authorNovember 5, 2012 at 21:44

       Thanks for your code. =D

       Reply ↓
12. jasonre December 19, 2012 at 02:18

    Will this work on a windows server running php?
    I am trying to use the above code and although I get sent displayed on the screen no email is received and I am not sure what to try?

    Reply ↓
    1. ykyuen Post authorDecember 19, 2012 at 20:36

       Is you server capable for sending email?

       Maybe u are missing a mail transfer agent. here is a example about how to setup Postfix in Ubuntu.
       Postfix – Relay via Gmail

       Reply ↓