I know how to generate PDF using mPDF library and send it as attachment using PHPMailer - something like this:
...
$emailAttachment = $mpdf->Output('file.pdf', 'S');
$mail = new PHPMailer();
$mail->AddStringAttachment($emailAttachment, 'file.pdf', 'base64', 'application/pdf');
...
But what if I generate PDF in separate PHP file (that should not be modified) - like this - invoice.php:
...
$mpdf = new mPDF();
$mpdf->WriteHTML($html);
$mpdf->Output();
exit;
How can I attach this dynamically created PDF file using PHPMailer?
I tried this:
$mail = new PHPMailer();
...
$mail->addStringAttachment(file_get_contents('invoice.php'), 'invoice.pdf', 'base64', 'application/pdf');
$mail->send();
Email is sent with correct content but PDF attachment is corrupted and thus cannot be displayed. How to encode it correctly? I tried few other ways but file is corrupted or is not attached at all (in one case, whole email body was blank).
Thank you for your help in advance! :)
The problem is that you're using file_get_contents
incorrectly; as you've used it, it will fetch the contents of include.php
, not the results of its execution. You need to expand it to a full URL in order to have it fetched that way, though I would advise not doing that. Have the script generate a PDF file and then load that, using the file output option of mpdf:
$mpdf = new mPDF();
$mpdf->WriteHTML($html);
$mpdf->Output('/path/to/files/doc.pdf', 'F');
Then run that script and attach the resulting file from PHPMailer (and delete the file afterwards):
include 'invoice.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer();
...
$mail->addAttachment('/path/to/files/doc.pdf');
$mail->send();
unlink('/path/to/files/doc.pdf');
You could skip the external file approach by using the "return a string" output mode (S
) of the Output
method and return
ing the string from the included file:
$mpdf = new mPDF();
$mpdf->WriteHTML($html);
return $mpdf->Output('doc.pdf', 'S');
and then:
$pdf = include 'invoice.php';
$mail = new PHPMailer();
...
$mail->addStringAttachment($pdf, 'doc.pdf');
$mail->send();