PHP - Email with attachment collapses original message

Question

While aware of better solutions, I am using manual PHP script to attach a file to the message to be sent by email. The file gets attached properly and I can even see the message, but for some reason the original message ($msg) gets collapsed! All those \n\r 's I have disappear. Any ideas??

Here's my code:

// construct message
$msg = "Beginning of message \n -------------------- \n\n";
$msg .= "some logic is added to the message using a loop with \r\n in between each item on the list.\r\n";
$msg .= "--\n The end of the message.";

// handle file upload
$attachment = $_FILES['uploaded']['tmp_name'];
$att_type = $_FILES['uploaded']['type'];
$att_name = $_FILES['uploaded']['name'];

if (is_uploaded_file($attachment)) {
  // read the file to be attached ('rb' = read binary)
  $file = fopen($attachment, 'rb');
  $data = fread($file, filesize($attachment));
  fclose($file);

  // generate a boundary string
  $semi_rand = md5(time());
  $mime_boundary = "==Multipart_Boundary_x[$semi_rand]x";

  // add the headers for a file attachment
  $headers .= "MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n" .
  "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"{$mime_boundary}\"\r\n\r\n";

  // MESSAGE GETS WRITTEN HERE
  // add a multipart boundary above the plain message
  $message = "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.\r\n" .
  "--{$mime_boundary}\r\n" .
  "Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"\r\n\r\n";
  $message .= $msg . "\r\n\r\n";

  // add file attachment to the message
  $message .= "\r\n--{$mime_boundary}\r\n" .
  "Content-Type: {$att_type};\r\n" .
  " name=\"{$att_name}\"\n" .
  "Content-Disposition: attachment;" .
  " filename=\"{$att_name}\"\r\n\r\n" .
  $data . "\r\n" .
  "--{$mime_boundary}--\n";
}
else {
  $message = $msg;
}
$success = mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

When the file is not uploaded, the message arrives with line breaks in it. But when the files is attached it collapses. Why? Any help appreciated! Otherwise this script works.

Answer 1

Looks like you're telling the email client that it's an HTML email by using Content-Type: text/html. Most email clients will display the HTML content of an email over the plain text version. That means \r\n won't work. You'll need to use <br /> in the HTML version to get the line breaks.