Send File Attachment from Form Using phpMailer and PHP

Question

I have a form on example.com/contact-us.php that looks like this (simplified):

<form method="post" action="process.php" enctype="multipart/form-data">
  <input type="file" name="uploaded_file" id="uploaded_file" />
  <input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="10000000" />
</form>

In my process.php file, I have the following code utilizing PHPMailer() to send an email:

require("phpmailer.php");

$mail = new PHPMailer();

$mail->From     = me@example.com;
$mail->FromName = My name;
$mail->AddAddress(me@example.com,"John Doe");

$mail->WordWrap = 50;
$mail->IsHTML(true);

$mail->Subject  =  "Contact Form Submitted";
$mail->Body     =  "This is the body of the message.";

The email sends the body correctly, but without the Attachment of uploaded_file.

MY QUESTION

I need the file uploaded_file from the form to be attached to the email, and sent. I do NOT care about saving the file after the process.php script sends it in an email.

I understand that I need to add AddAttachment(); somewhere (I'm assuming under the Body line) for the attachment to be sent. But...

1. What do I put at the top of the process.php file to pull in the file uploaded_file? Like something using $_FILES['uploaded_file'] to pull in the file from the contact-us.php page?
2. What goes inside of AddAttachment(); for the file to be attached and sent along with the email and where does this code need to go?

Please help and provide code!Thanks!

Answer 1

Try:

if (isset($_FILES['uploaded_file'])
    && $_FILES['uploaded_file']['error'] == UPLOAD_ERR_OK
) {
    $mail->addAttachment($_FILES['uploaded_file']['tmp_name'],
                         $_FILES['uploaded_file']['name']);
}

A basic example attaching multiple file uploads can be found here.

The function definition for addAttachment is:

/**
 * Add an attachment from a path on the filesystem.
 * Never use a user-supplied path to a file!
 * Returns false if the file could not be found or read.
 * Explicitly *does not* support passing URLs; PHPMailer is not an HTTP client.
 * If you need to do that, fetch the resource yourself and pass it in via a local file or string.
 *
 * @param string $path        Path to the attachment
 * @param string $name        Overrides the attachment name
 * @param string $encoding    File encoding (see $Encoding)
 * @param string $type        MIME type, e.g. `image/jpeg`; determined automatically from $path if not specified
 * @param string $disposition Disposition to use
 *
 * @throws Exception
 *
 * @return bool
 */
public function addAttachment(
    $path,
    $name = '',
    $encoding = self::ENCODING_BASE64,
    $type = '',
    $disposition = 'attachment'
)

Answer 2

File could not be Attached from client PC (upload)

In the HTML form I have not added following line, so no attachment was going:

enctype="multipart/form-data"

After adding above line in form (as below), the attachment went perfect.

<form id="form1" name="form1" method="post" action="form_phpm_mailer.php"  enctype="multipart/form-data">

Answer 3

This code help me in Attachment sending....

$mail->AddAttachment($_FILES['file']['tmp_name'], $_FILES['file']['name']);

Replace your AddAttachment(...) Code with above code

Answer 4

Use this code for sending attachment with upload file option using html form in phpmailer

 <form method="post" action="" enctype="multipart/form-data">


                    <input type="text" name="name" placeholder="Your Name *">
                    <input type="email" name="email" placeholder="Email *">
                    <textarea name="msg" placeholder="Your Message"></textarea>


                    <input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="30000" />
                    <input type="file" name="userfile"  />


                <input name="contact" type="submit" value="Submit Enquiry" />
   </form>


    <?php




        if(isset($_POST["contact"]))
        {

            /////File Upload

            // In PHP versions earlier than 4.1.0, $HTTP_POST_FILES should be used instead
            // of $_FILES.

            $uploaddir = 'uploads/';
            $uploadfile = $uploaddir . basename($_FILES['userfile']['name']);

            echo '<pre>';
            if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'], $uploadfile)) {
                echo "File is valid, and was successfully uploaded.\n";
            } else {
                echo "Possible invalid file upload !\n";
            }

            echo 'Here is some more debugging info:';
            print_r($_FILES);

            print "</pre>";


            ////// Email


            require_once("class.phpmailer.php");
            require_once("class.smtp.php");



            $mail_body = array($_POST['name'], $_POST['email'] , $_POST['msg']);
            $new_body = "Name: " . $mail_body[0] . ", Email " . $mail_body[1] . " Description: " . $mail_body[2];



            $d=strtotime("today"); 

            $subj = 'New enquiry '. date("Y-m-d h:i:sa", $d);

            $mail = new PHPMailer(); // create a new object


            //$mail->IsSMTP(); // enable SMTP
            $mail->SMTPDebug = 1; // debugging: 1 = errors and messages, 2 = messages only ,false = Disable 
            $mail->Host = "mail.yourhost.com";
            $mail->Port = '465';
            $mail->SMTPAuth = true; // enable 
            $mail->SMTPSecure = true;
            $mail->IsHTML(true);
            $mail->Username = "admin@domain.net"; //from@domainname.com
            $mail->Password = "password";
            $mail->SetFrom("admin@domain.net", "Your Website Name");
            $mail->Subject = $subj;
            $mail->Body    = $new_body;

            $mail->AddAttachment($uploadfile);

            $mail->AltBody = 'Upload';
            $mail->AddAddress("recipient@domain.com");
             if(!$mail->Send())
                {
                echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
                }
                else
                {

                echo '<p>       Success              </p> ';

                }

        }



?>

Use this link for reference.

Answer 5

This will work perfectly

    <form method='post' enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input type='file' name='uploaded_file' id='uploaded_file' multiple='multiple' />
    <input type='submit' name='upload'/> 
    </form>

    <?php
           if(isset($_POST['upload']))
        {
             if (isset($_FILES['uploaded_file']) && $_FILES['uploaded_file']['error'] == UPLOAD_ERR_OK)
                {
                     if (array_key_exists('uploaded_file', $_FILES))
                        { 
                            $mail->Subject = "My Subject";
                            $mail->Body = 'This is the body';
                            $uploadfile = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), sha1($_FILES['uploaded_file']['name']));
                        if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['uploaded_file']['tmp_name'], $uploadfile))
                             $mail->addAttachment($uploadfile,$_FILES['uploaded_file']['name']); 
                            $mail->send();
                            echo 'Message has been sent';
                        }       
                else
                    echo "The file is not uploaded. please try again.";
                }
                else
                    echo "The file is not uploaded. please try again";
        }
    ?>

Answer 6

You'd use $_FILES['uploaded_file']['tmp_name'], which is the path where PHP stored the uploaded file (it's a temporary file, removed automatically by PHP when the script ends, unless you've moved/copied it elsewhere).

Assuming your client-side form and server-side upload settings are correct, there's nothing you have to do to "pull in" the upload. It'll just magically be available in that tmp_name path.

Note that you WILL have to validate that the upload actually succeeded, e.g.

if ($_FILES['uploaded_file']['error'] === UPLOAD_ERR_OK) {
    ... attach file to email ...
}

Otherwise you may try to do an attachment with a damaged/partial/non-existent file.

Answer 7

Hey guys the code below worked perfectly fine for me. Just replace the setFrom and addAddress with your preference and that's it.

<?php
/**
 * PHPMailer simple file upload and send example.
 */
//Import the PHPMailer class into the global namespace
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;
$msg = '';
if (array_key_exists('userfile', $_FILES)) {
    // First handle the upload
    // Don't trust provided filename - same goes for MIME types
    // See http://php.net/manual/en/features.file-upload.php#114004 for more thorough upload validation
    $uploadfile = tempnam(sys_get_temp_dir(), hash('sha256', $_FILES['userfile']['name']));
    if (move_uploaded_file($_FILES['userfile']['tmp_name'], $uploadfile)) 
    {
        // Upload handled successfully
        // Now create a message

        require 'vendor/autoload.php';
        $mail = new PHPMailer;
        $mail->setFrom('info@example.com', 'CV from Web site');
        $mail->addAddress('blabla@gmail.com', 'CV');
        $mail->Subject = 'PHPMailer file sender';
        $mail->Body = 'My message body';

        $filename = $_FILES["userfile"]["name"]; // add this line of code to auto pick the file name
        //$mail->addAttachment($uploadfile, 'My uploaded file'); use the one below instead

        $mail->addAttachment($uploadfile, $filename);
        if (!$mail->send()) 
        {
            $msg .= "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;
        } 
        else 
        {
            $msg .= "Message sent!";
        }
    } 
        else 
        {
            $msg .= 'Failed to move file to ' . $uploadfile;
        }
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
    <title>PHPMailer Upload</title>
</head>
<body>
<?php if (empty($msg)) { ?>
    <form method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
        <input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="4194304" />
        <input name="userfile" type="file">
        <input type="submit" value="Send File">
    </form>

<?php } else {
    echo $msg;
} ?>
</body>
</html>

Answer 8

In my own case, i was using serialize() on the form, Hence the files were not being sent to php. If you are using jquery, use FormData(). For example

<form id='form'>
<input type='file' name='file' />
<input type='submit' />
</form>

Using jquery,

$('#form').submit(function (e) {
e.preventDefault();
var formData = new FormData(this); // grab all form contents including files
//you can then use formData and pass to ajax

});