php mail() link image

Question

Hi,

I am trying to send an e-mail using the following code:

$htmlHeaders="";
$htmlHeaders  = "MIME-Version: 1.0 \r\n";
$htmlHeaders .= "Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 \r\n";
$htmlHeaders .= "X-Mailer: PHP/" . phpversion(). "\r\n";
$htmlHeaders .= "From: System <[email protected]> \r\n";

mail("[email protected]","Subject",'New test <img src="http://www.someserver/image.jpg"&gt;',$htmlHeaders);

what I noticed is that for some images (I always link the images through an http link) are working fine and the mail is delivered correctly, while for some other images I get problems; that is, the image is NOT delivered.

For example, trying to use this image wont work: http://img826.imageshack.us/img826/2601/gitaallago.png

I guess it is a problem of headers, but I really do not understand how to fix this.

Any hints?

Answer 1

Often times the problem is the mail client. Some mail clients by default will only download images under a certain size, some will not download any images at all.

Your best bet (though it can be quite a lot more work than what you're doing now) is to attach the image to the email with a CID and reference the image that way (<img src="cid:whatever">)

It will increase the size of your email because you have to transmit the image with each email, but it will display in far more mail clients that way.

Answer 2

Is the correct MIME type being served by the server for the images?

You didn't make it clear whether or not you're saving the image on your server, and linking to it from there, or linking to it straight from Imageshack (in this example.) If you're linking straight from Imageshack, then MIME types definitely aren't the problem. Worth looking into, however, if you're hosting the images on your server.