What is the difference between sending an image inline versus as an attachment in PHP emails?

When sending an image inline in a PHP email, the image is displayed within the body of the email itself. This is useful for including images in the content of the email. On the other hand, when sending an image as an attachment, the image is sent as a separate file that the recipient can download and view separately. This is useful for sending images that are not directly related to the email content. To send an image inline in a PHP email, you can use the `addStringEmbeddedImage` method of the PHPMailer library. This method allows you to embed an image in the email body by providing the image data, MIME type, and content ID. Here is an example code snippet that demonstrates how to send an image inline in a PHP email using PHPMailer: 

use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\SMTP;
use PHPMailer\PHPMailer\Exception;

// Include PHPMailer autoloader
require 'vendor/autoload.php';

// Create a new PHPMailer instance
$mail = new PHPMailer();

// Set up the SMTP settings
$mail->isSMTP();
$mail->Host = 'smtp.example.com';
$mail->SMTPAuth = true;
$mail->Username = 'your@example.com';
$mail->Password = 'your_password';
$mail->SMTPSecure = PHPMailer::ENCRYPTION_STARTTLS;
$mail->Port = 587;

// Set the email content
$mail->isHTML(true);
$mail->Subject = 'Inline Image Test';
$mail->Body = '<h1>Inline Image Example</h1><img src="cid:my_image">';

// Add the image as an inline attachment
$image_data = file_get_contents('path/to/image.jpg');
$mail->addStringEmbeddedImage($image_data, 'my_image', 'image.jpg', 'base64', 'image/jpeg');

// Set the sender and recipient
$mail->setFrom('your@example.com', 'Your Name');
$mail->addAddress('recipient@example.com', 'Recipient Name');

// Send the email
if ($mail->send()) {
    echo 'Email sent successfully';
} else {
    echo 'Email sending failed';
}

Keywords

PHP email image inline attachment

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