Exclamation Point in HTML Email

php html email html-email
Haru picture Haru · Oct 27, 2011 · Viewed 9.7k times · Source

I am having a hard time formatting a table in an HTML email. There seems to always be one cell that doesn't have the background color or weird white spaces.

Here is the code (in php) - 

 $subject.="<br/><br/><table style=\"width:585px;\" ><tr><td style=\"padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;\">New & Used Vehicles</td><td style=\"padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;\">Term in Months</td><td style=\"padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;\">APR* As Low As</td><td style=\"padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;\">Monthly Payment Per $1000 Borrowed</td></tr>";       
    $result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM rates WHERE ID>='32' AND ID <='39'");
        while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
    {
                  $subject.= "<tr><td BGCOLOR=\"#e5f1ff\" style=\"padding:10px;color:black;\">" . $row['name'] . "</td>";
                  $subject.= "<td BGCOLOR=\"#e5f1ff\" style=\"padding:10px;\">" . $row['term'] . "</td>";
                  $subject.= "<td BGCOLOR=\"#e5f1ff\" style=\"padding:10px;\">" . $row['apr'] . "</td>";
                  $subject.= "<td BGCOLOR=\"#e5f1ff\" style=\"padding:10px;\">" . $row['per_1000'] . "</td></tr>";
    }

 $subject.= "</table>";

So I've tried both css background and html and both create something that looks bad. I've also tried Doctypes.

This is what my mail code looks like.

    mail( "[email protected]", "$title2", "$subject" , "Content-type: text/html;\r\nFrom: [email protected]" );

Here is what it renders out like. See the rogue space?

Table that is messed up!

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head></head><body>Check out the low rates.<table style="width:585px;" ><tr><td style="padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;">New &amp; Used Vehicles</td><td style="padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;">Term in Months</td><td style="padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;">APR* As Low As</td><td style="padding:10px;background-color:#113797;color:white;">Monthly Payment Per $1000 Borrowed</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2008 and NEWER Vehicle Purchases</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">Up to 72 Months</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">3.24%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$17.28</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2008 and NEWER Vehicle!
  Purchases</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">64 - 72 Months</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">4.29%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$15.69</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2007 and OLDER Vehicle Purchases</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">Up to 72 Months</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">5.49%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$18.20</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2007 and OLDER Vehicle Purchases</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">64 - 72 Months</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">5.99%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$16.46</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2011 &amp; 2010 REFINANCES</td><td bgcolor=!
 "#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">Up to 63 Months</t!
 d><td bg
color="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">4.99%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$18.08</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2011 &amp; 2010 REFINANCES</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">64 - 72 Months</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">5.49%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$16.34</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2008 - 2009 REFINANCES</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">Up to 60 Months</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">5.99%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$19.33</td></tr><tr><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;color:black;height:100%;">2007 &amp; older Vehicle REFINANCE</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">Up to 60 Months</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px!
 ;height:100%;">6.99%</td><td bgcolor="#e5f1ff" style="padding:10px;height:100%;">$19.80</td></tr></table></body></html>

Answer

Haru picture Haru · Oct 27, 2011

I hate to answer my own question but I did find a resolution to the issue, and hopefully someone can use this solution to get rid of the headaches this causes.

The issue is being caused by use of the mail() function. When I try to send the email, I have a long string of html code. IN FACT, TOO LONG! When I go past 78 characters a BANG! shows up and then jacks with my html or css. RFC 2822

The resolution is to change it to base-64 encode the data or add \r\n on my long lines of html code. Either way resolves the issue.

Thanks for the help everyone!

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