I have an automated email system set up to send an html file as an email. I bring that file into my email with PHPMailer, using
$mail->msgHTML(file_get_contents('mailContent.html'), dirname(__FILE__));
In the PHP source, before I add the mailContent.html, I have a variable $name='John Appleseed' (it is dynamic, this is just an example)
In the HTML file, I'm wondering if there is a way that I can use this $name variable in a <p> tag.
You can add a special string like %name% in your mailContent.html file, then you can replace this string with the value your want:
In mailContent.html:
Hello %name%,
…
In your PHP code:
$name='John Appleseed';
$content = str_replace('%name%', $name, file_get_contents('mailContent.html'));
$content will have the value Hello %name%, …, you can send it:
$mail->msgHTML($content, dirname(__FILE__));
You can also replace several strings in one call to str_replace() by using two arrays:
$content = str_replace(
array('%name%', '%foo%'),
array($name, $foo),
file_get_contents('mailContent.html')
);
And you can also replace several strings in one call to strtr() by using one array:
$content = strtr(
file_get_contents('mailContent.html'),
array(
'%name%' => $name,
'%foo%' => $foo,
)
);
You need to use a templating system for this. Templating can be done with PHP itself by writing your HTML in a .php file like this:
<html>
<body>
<p>
Hi <?= $name ?>,
</p>
<p>
This is an email message. <?= $someVariable ?>
</p>
</body>
</html>
Variables are added using <?= $variable ?> or <?php echo $variable ?>. Make sure your variables are properly escaped HTML using htmlspecialchars() if they come from user input.
And then to the template in your program, do something like this:
$name = 'John Appleseed';
$someVariable = 'Foo Bar';
ob_start();
include('template.php');
$message = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
$mail->msgHTML($message, dirname(__FILE__));
As well as using PHP for simple templating, you can use templating languages for PHP such as Twig.
Here is a function to do it using extract, and ob_*
extract will turn keys into variables with their value of key in the array. Hope that makes sense. It will turn array keys into variables.
function getHTMLWithDynamicVars(array $arr, $file)
{
ob_start();
extract($arr);
include($file);
$realData = ob_get_contents();
ob_end_clean();
return $realData;
}
Caller example:
$htmlFile = getHTMLWithDynamicVars(['name' => $name], 'mailContent.html');
In one of my older scripts I have a function which parses a file for variables that look like {{ variableName }} and have them replaced from an array lookup.
function parseVars($emailFile, $vars) {
$vSearch = preg_match_all('/{{.*?}}/', $emailFile, $vVariables);
for ($i=0; $i < $vSearch; $i++) {
$vVariables[0][$i] = str_replace(array('{{', '}}'), NULL, $vVariables[0][$i]);
}
if(count($vVariables[0]) == 0) {
throw new TemplateException("There are no variables to replace.");
}
$formattedFile = '';
foreach ($vVariables[0] as $value) {
$formattedFile = str_replace('{{'.$value.'}}', $vars[$value], $formattedFile);
}
return $formattedFile;
}
Do you have the $name variable in the same file where you send the mail? Then you can just replace it with a placeholder;
Place __NAME__ in the HTML file where you want the name to show up, then use str_ireplace('__NAME__', $name, file_get_contents('mailContent.html')) to replace the placeholder with the $name variable.
include(), then any php inside that html would get executed, but then it also wouldn't return the generated html as a string.