Sending e-mail via PHPMailer with attachments from URL

Question

I'm using PHPMailer. I have to send two attachments and both are links (one is base64 image and the second one is url).

// Variables with images
$croped_img = 'data:image/jpg;base64,/extreme_long_code_here';
$photo_thumbnail_url = 'http://t2.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/76/44/75/400_F_76447580_gOWAV0P8APW0iC51OsW5huD6qoiEsh7O.jpg';

// PHPMailer
$mail->addAttachment('$photo_thumbnail_url', 'selected.jpg');
$mail->addAttachment('$croped_img', 'croped_img.jpg');

PHPMailer works because if I send e-mail in that form, attachments do not come. But if I link local image e.g. 'images/abc.jpg' then they comes.

What php functions should I use to send my variables as e-mail attachments?

Answer 1

As always, make sure you're using a recent version of PHPMailer.

You need to use addStringAttachment, docs here:

$photo_thumbnail_url = 'http://t2.ftcdn.net/jpg/00/76/44/75/400_F_76447580_gOWAV0P8APW0iC51OsW5huD6qoiEsh7O.jpg';
$mail->addStringAttachment(file_get_contents($photo_thumbnail_url), 'selected.jpg');

The msgHTML function handles data URLs automatically, converting them to embedded images with automatic cid values, so if your image is already embedded in your HTML, you don't have to do anything for it to work.

If you want to handle data URL conversion yourself, you can see how it works here.