php mail special characters utf8

Question

I have the following script:

<?php
    $subject = "Testmail — Special Characters";
    $msg = "Hi there,\n\nthis isn’t something easy.\n\nI haven’t thought that it’s that complicated!";

    mail($to,$subject,$msg,$from."\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n");
?>

In the e-mail:

Subject: Testmail ? Special Characters

Body:

Hi there,

this isn?t something easy.

I haven?t thought that it?s that complicated!

I tried a lot of things, but I have no ideas anymore. Can you help me? Did you ever got this working?

THX!

score 19 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 31 '13 at 13:46

19

Did you try iconv_set_encoding ?

This should work :

<?php
 iconv_set_encoding("internal_encoding", "UTF-8");

$subject = "Testmail — Special Characters";
$msg = "Hi there,\n\nthis isn’t something easy.\n\nI haven’t thought that it’s that complicated!";

mail(utf8_decode($to), utf8_decode($subject), utf8_decode($msg), utf8_decode($from)."\nContent-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit\n");?>

answered Oct 31 '13 at 13:46

Gregosaurus

491
3
5

2

wow, it works well for the body, but not for the subject: "Testmail � Special Characters" Ideas? – John Doe Smith Oct 31 '13 at 13:58
@JohnDoeSmith: the reason is that you cannot utf8_decode() a character, such as the long dash, that has no equivalent 1-byte representation. I don't see how you can accept this answer – Walter Tross Oct 31 '13 at 14:15
3

Use [mb_encode_mimeheader](http://php.net/manual/en/function.mb-encode-mimeheader.php) for the subject : $subject = mb_encode_mimeheader($subject,"UTF-8"); – Gregosaurus Oct 31 '13 at 14:17
1

Adding the correct mail headers instead of trying to decode stuff back into weaker encodings would be better (read: worked out better for me). Cleaner code, and less bugs. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7266935/how-to-send-utf-8-email – Arno Teigseth Apr 16 '17 at 11:33

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 01 '21 at 08:59

While iconv_set_encoding did not work for me, the following did:

// Force PHP to use the UTF-8 charset
header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8'); 

// Define and Base64 encode the subject line
$subject_text = 'Test email with German Umlauts öäüß';
$subject = '=?UTF-8?B?' . base64_encode($subject_text) . '?=';

// Add custom headers
$headers = 'Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8' . "\r\n";
$headers .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64';

// Define and Base64 the email body text
$message = base64_encode('This email contains German Umlauts öäüß.');

// Send mail with custom headers
if (mail('recipient@domain.com', $subject, $message, $headers)) {
    echo 'Email has been sent!';
} else {
    echo 'Oops, something gone wrong!';
}

Source: https://dev.to/lutvit/how-to-make-the-php-mail-function-awesome-3cii

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 31 '13 at 13:47

-1

Use ’ in place of the ’.

Example:

The dog&rsquo;s bone.

Make sure you change the content-type from text/plain to text/html.

answered Oct 31 '13 at 13:47

dead beef

643
2
6
19

that would be too easy. if do it this way I'll get exactly ’ in the output/email – John Doe Smith Oct 31 '13 at 14:01

php mail special characters utf8

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