Email query / PDF Attachment / Disabling plain text emails

[terraGirl]

I'm modifying ZC 1.5.7 to attach a PDF file with DOMPDF to an email sent by the ZC shop. This is working great, but I've noticed the following message in the mail.php file:

right now, attachments aren't working right unless only sending HTML messages with NO text-only version supplied.

I'm fine with only sending HTML emails and wanted to check if there's an easy way to disable text-only emails? I assume I need to modify the registration page to remove the Email format question (plain / html). Anything else I need to consider?

Many thanks, Edith

[swguy]

Just to confirm, this is being done during an email sent from the admin using Admin > Tools > Send Email ? Or another path?

[terraGirl]

Hi swguy,

I'm working on the order confirmation email, which is sent via $order->send_order_email(). I'm writing this with an observer class hooking into NOTIFY_ORDER_INVOICE_CONTENT_READY_TO_SEND; and it works very well, the PHPMailer function addStringAttachment seems to work fine.

But I've seen notices in the Zen Cart code that email attachments are under development.

* @param array $attachments_list Array of attachment names/mime-types to be included (this portion still in testing, and not fully reliable)

right now, attachments aren't working right unless only sending HTML messages with NO text-only version supplied.

I'd be grateful for any info what isn't reliable & where I need to look out for issues. Text-only emails seem a problem (and these I haven't tested yet), hence my query about disabling them.

[DrByte]

Edith, it's possible that the problem may be isolated to an older PHPMailer implementation.
If it's working correctly for you to just attach the PDF to an existing confirmation email, and you've tested that the attachments are received and displayed correctly on email clients that are set to read emails only in text mode (ignoring all HTML), as well as those with html enabled, then it may be a non-issue.

Remember: by default if you have HTML=on for Zen Cart emails (and the customer has html enabled in preferences), Zen Cart will generate both the HTML and text-only portions of the email and include both in the email when sending it.

If there is still a real problem as per the code comment (and yes, I wrote that comment, a long time ago), then to skip the text-only portion of the email, you'd do it at a later stage after the text-only part was autogenerated by something like setting it to blank or (I don't remember for sure) calling a function on the $mail object to tell it to drop the text part and use html only.
And only for the emails where you're adding the attachment. All other emails can be left as-is with both html/text according to user preference as they'd not be affected.

[terraGirl]

Thank you, that's very helpful! I'll see how my testing goes, and if all okay I can post back the code in case anyone else wants it.

[terraGirl]

Hi DrByte,

I've tested an HTML email with attachment, and it displays fine in HTML (tested with Apple Mail on Mac); and in plain text (tested with RoundCube, with plain text display selected). So far I can't see any problems.

If anyone is reading this thread & wants to add a PDF to the order confirmation email (eg an invoice), here's my current structure:

As observer file I've got:

<?php

/**
 * Attach a PDF invoice to the order email 
 * $this->notify('NOTIFY_ORDER_INVOICE_CONTENT_READY_TO_SEND', array('zf_insert_id' => $zf_insert_id, 'text_email' => $email_order, 'html_email' => $html_msg), $email_order, $html_msg, $send_customer_email);
 * $this->notify('NOTIFY_ORDER_AFTER_SEND_ORDER_EMAIL', $zf_insert_id, $email_order, $extra_info, $html_msg);
 */
 
class zcObserverAgPdfAttachment extends base {
	
	function __construct() {			
		$this->attach( $this, array('NOTIFY_ORDER_INVOICE_CONTENT_READY_TO_SEND' , 'NOTIFY_ORDER_AFTER_SEND_ORDER_EMAIL') );	
		define('EMAIL_ATTACHMENTS_ENABLED', TRUE);	
	} // ends construct 
	
	function update(&$class, $eventID, $paramsArray = array(), $email_order, $html_msg, $send_customer_email ) {
		
		if ($eventID === 'NOTIFY_ORDER_INVOICE_CONTENT_READY_TO_SEND') { 
			
			// attach PDF invoice before sending for customer & admin email 
		
			global $order;		
			$orderID = (int)$paramsArray['zf_insert_id']; 
			
			/* Load our Invoice PDF class */
			require_once  DIR_WS_CLASSES . 'agPdfInvoice.php';
			
			/* create Invoice */
			$pdf_name = 'Invoice_' . $orderID . '.pdf';
			$pdf_object = new agPdfInvoice(); 
			$pdf = $pdf_object->create_pdf($order, $paramsArray['html_email']); // returns FALSE if PDF creation failed 
			 			
			/**
			 * /functions/functions_email.php expects:
			 * $attachments_list = array(
				 'name'
				 'mime_type'
				 'raw_data' (addStringAttachment with encoding base64) OR 'file' (addAttachment)
			 ); 
			**/			
			
			if ($pdf !== FALSE ) {		
				$order->attachArray[] = array(
					'name' => $pdf_name,
					'mime_type' => 'application/pdf',
					'raw_data' => $pdf
				);  		
			}
		
		} elseif ($eventID === 'NOTIFY_ORDER_AFTER_SEND_ORDER_EMAIL') {		
			// reset attachment to empty			
			global $order;			
			$order->attachArray = '';				
		}
			
	} // ends update 
	
}

Then my class file is:

<?php
/**
 * AG PDF INVOICE CLASS	
 *
 */
if (!defined('IS_ADMIN_FLAG')) {
    die('Illegal Access');
}

/**
 * AG PDF INVOICE class 
 * Class to handle PDF invoices for order emails & my account area 
 *
 */
class agPdfInvoice {
	
	public function __construct() {	
		require_once  DIR_FS_CATALOG . 'libraries/dompdf/autoload.inc.php';			
	}
	

	/**
	* Creates the PDF
	**/
	public function create_pdf($order, $html_email, $date) {
		
		if ( is_object($order) && !empty($order) && is_array($html_email) && !empty($html_email) ) {
		
			$options = new \Dompdf\Options();
			$options->set( 'dpi' , '72' );
			$dompdf = new \Dompdf\Dompdf($options);			
			
			$dompdf->setPaper('A4', 'portrait');
			$dompdf->loadHtml($this->get_invoice_html($order, $html_email, $date) );
							
			// Render the HTML as PDF
			$dompdf->render();	
			
			$output = $dompdf->output();								
			
			return $output;
		
		} else {		
			return FALSE; 
		}			
	}
	
	/** 
	 * HTML for invoice 
	 **/ 
	public function get_invoice_html($order, $html_email) {	
		global $currencies; 	
		ob_start();		
		// HTML content goes here 	
		return ob_get_clean();			
	}
	
}

and I've added the DOMPDF library to /libraries/dompdf/. DOMPDF advises that it needs to be secured, so there's more work I need to do, either an .htaccess protection or moving the library out of the web root.

The observer hooks have made this very easy. I can see this working even better when plugins for frontend are available, but even so it's nicely contained, with no need to modify core files.

Happy coding! Edith

[DrByte]

you mentioned libraries/dompdf

Often we put libraries like that into /includes/classes/vendors/
That way the default /includes/.htaccess protects it, and it's still available for use in both catalog and admin if necessary.

This only works when packages/libraries have their own "autoload.inc.php" or equivalent (not for Composer packages without a standalone autoloader file that can be used). Fortunately the one you mention does.

[DrByte]

Minor suggestions for the Observer class:

1. for the DEFINE in the constructor, you might want to preface it with if (!defined()) just to avoid throwing errors. Granted, if it's already defined to false then the whole thing will do nothing right, so perhaps you might do:
- if not defined, define it to true
- then check if its defined value is "not true", and if so, just "return" since there's no longer any need to do any $this->attach
- and of course then move the $this->attach stuff below it

2. instead of "if/elseif" for $eventID, consider this structure:

if ($eventID === 'whatever') {
  // do stuff

  return;
}

if ($eventID === 'another thing') {
  // do other stuff

  return;
}

That way you don't need an "else", which can sometimes make readability easier, and the part I like most is fewer nested braces/brackets to have to sort out when reading thru the code.

[terraGirl]

Thank you, good suggestions!