NYCPHP Meetup

[Hans Zaunere]

David Mintz wrote on Thursday, November 10, 2005 4:47 PM:
> Planning to roll my own MySQL/PHP-based mass emailer. Why? Because the
> recipient list isn't a semi-static, monolithic thing. The admin user
> needs to be able to select subsets of people/addresses from a
> database based on various criteria.  (This is your chance to point me
> to an existing (free) tool that can do or be adapted to do this -- I
> haven't found any.)

Hey, these are always fun things to write :)

> So here's my (first) question:  What constitutes a well-formed HTML
> email body? Is there a "right" way -- other than getting the MIME
> headers right? I would assume that your email body should be just
> like the BODY element of any valid HTML document -- a regular HTML
> document minus the HEAD element.

The MIME headers are critical.  IIRC, Thunderbird forms good headers.  Send
yourself a big complicated HTML message, then view the raw source.  The HTML
is standard HTML - but the headers dictate how things should be read, and of
course you should have an alternate part in plain text.

> Hopefully I can make this a well-made and abstract enough beast to
> merit sharing once it's done.

That'd be great - when you get to a sticky spot (like sending large amounts
of email from a web server) let us know how things go.


---
Hans Zaunere / President / New York PHP
   www.nyphp.org  /  www.nyphp.com