how to send an HTML email with an inline attached image with PHP -

i have php script sends html email attached image. works beauifully, however, can't attachment display in <img> tag in email body. attached file called postcard.png , original filename on server 4e60348f83f2f.png. i've tried giving image url various things: cid:postcard.png, cid:4e60348f83f2f.png, postcard.png, , 4e60348f83f2f.png. nothing works.

i think key part i'm doing wrong here, because makes separated attachment instead of inline attachment can use:

content-transfer-encoding: base64 content-disposition: attachment;     filename="$fname" // i.e.: "postcard.png" 

i've tried changing use cid don't know how that, , didnt' work @ all:

content-transfer-encoding: base64 content-id: <$fname> // i.e.: postcard.png 

here's full code: (it's based on this code comment in php mail() page.)

<?php $to      = "recipient@email.com"; $email   = "sender@email.com"; $name    = "namename"; $subject = "an inline image!";  $comment = "llookout <b>llary</b> it's <br> <b>ll</b>andllord!<br><img src='cid:postcard.png'><br><img src='cid:4e60348f83f2f.png'><img src='postcard.png'><br><img src='4e60348f83f2f.png'>";  $to          = strip_tags($to); $textmessage =strip_tags(nl2br($comment),"<br>"); $htmlmessage =nl2br($comment); $fromname    =strip_tags($name); $fromemail   =strip_tags($email); $subject     =strip_tags($subject);  $boundary1   =rand(0,9)."-"     .rand(10000000000,9999999999)."-"     .rand(10000000000,9999999999)."=:"     .rand(10000,99999); $boundary2   =rand(0,9)."-".rand(10000000000,9999999999)."-"     .rand(10000000000,9999999999)."=:"     .rand(10000,99999);  $filename1 = "4e60348f83f2f.png"; //name of file on server script $handle      =fopen($filename1, 'rb');  $f_contents  =fread($handle, filesize($filename1));  $attachment=chunk_split(base64_encode($f_contents)); fclose($handle);   $ftype       ="image/png"; $fname       ="postcard.png"; //what file named   $attachments=''; $headers     =<<<akam from: $fromname <$fromemail> reply-to: $fromemail mime-version: 1.0 content-type: multipart/mixed;     boundary="$boundary1" akam;  $attachments.=<<<atta --$boundary1 content-type: $ftype;     name="$fname" content-transfer-encoding: base64 content-disposition: attachment;     filename="$fname"   $attachment  atta;   $body        =<<<akam multi-part message in mime format.  --$boundary1 content-type: multipart/alternative;     boundary="$boundary2"  --$boundary2 content-type: text/plain;     charset="windows-1256" content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable  $textmessage --$boundary2 content-type: text/html;     charset="windows-1256" content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable  $htmlmessage  --$boundary2--  $attachments --$boundary1-- akam;  // send email $ok=mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers); echo $ok?"<h1> mail sent!</h1>":"<h1> mail not sent!</h1>"; ?> 

i found answer, turns out remarkably simple. this page helped me figure out, i'll demonstrate parts needed done below.

first off, there's creation of boundary string, , image, correctly encoded , chunked:

// create boundary string.  needs unique (not in text) ... // going use sha1 algorithm generate 40 character string: $sep = sha1(date('r', time()));  // prepare our inline image - read, encode, split: $inline = chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents('figure.gif'))); 

in html part of email, image referenced (using boundary string):

<img src="cid:php-cid-{$sep}"> 

then create part of email below html part inline attachment, this:

--php-related-{$sep} content-type: image/gif content-transfer-encoding: base64 content-id: <php-cid-{$sep}> {$inline} 

...and that! easier implementing phpmailer or of other libraries, if you're doing. no doubt more complicated task, you'll want 1 of libraries.