PHP html email, using html template

Question

so i'm trying to do a do a html mail sytem and my html i want to be a template, stored in a separate file like :

<div clas="headr"></div>
    <div class="content"></div>
<div class="footer"></div>

when i want to send the mail i want my mail content(from the input form) to go in that div.content and then to send the whole html(template + submitted text). what is the best way to do that? i'm thinking to something like:

1. import the template into my php that sends the mail
2. find the div with a "content" class and add the submitted text into it
3. send mail

but i don't know how to "find" that div and write the submitted text into it.

Solution 1

As Pekka was saying, you could simply use str_replace to insert data in your template. Just add a placeholder:

<div clas="header"></div>
<div class="content">{{content}}</div>
<div class="footer"></div>

Then replace the placeholder with your content:

$content = 'Whatever you want to insert...';
$tpl = file_get_contents('yourtemplate.html');
$tpl = str_replace('{{content}}', $content, $tpl);
mail($tpl, ...);

Solution 2

You could put a PHP script inside the template and then have PHP itself do the rendering, for example:

template.html:

<div clas="headr"></div>
    <div class="content"><?php echo $body; ?></div>
<div class="footer"></div>

Then to load it, in your PHP code:

$body = "Put this into the content tag...";
ob_start();
include("template.html");
$email = ob_get_clean();

Edit: in this case it's perhaps a bit overkill to use my method instead of a simple replace, but if instead of replacing the entire email message you wanted to have a more complicated template, it makes it easy. E.g.:

<table>
 <tr>
  <td>Name:</td>
  <td><?php echo $name; ?></td>
 </tr>
 <tr>
  <td>Email:</td>
  <td><?php echo $email; ?></td>
 </tr>
</table>

It's very flexible and prevents having to have too many variables to replace, and more importantly keeps html out of your code.

Solution 3

Use str_replace() to insert the content into your template.

Use a class like PHPMailer to easily send HTML E-Mails.

Solution 4

Please, find out the wide answer at Programmers.StackExchange which includes different approaches on PHP email templating.

The simple PHP solutions can be:

• usage of simple %placeholder% replacement mechanisms:
  • str_replace,
  • preg_replace (works great with array replacements)
• simple PHP templating and conditional logic (short open tags in PHP and alternative syntax for control structures)

View more solutions

Comments

[Amit Patil]

+1 PHP is a templating language, might as well take advantage of it. You still need htmlspecialchars though.