iconv_mime_decode

    (PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

    iconv_mime_decode — Decodes a MIME header field

    Description

    iconv_mime_decode(string $string, int $mode = 0, ?string $encoding = null): string|false

    Decodes a MIME header field.

    Parameters

    string

    The encoded header, as a string.

    mode

    mode determines the behaviour in the event iconv_mime_decode() encounters a malformed MIME header field. You can specify any combination of the following bitmasks.

    Bitmasks acceptable to iconv_mime_decode()
    Value Constant Description
    1 ICONV_MIME_DECODE_STRICT If set, the given header is decoded in full conformance with the standards defined in » RFC2047. This option is disabled by default because there are a lot of broken mail user agents that don't follow the specification and don't produce correct MIME headers.
    2 ICONV_MIME_DECODE_CONTINUE_ON_ERROR If set, iconv_mime_decode_headers() attempts to ignore any grammatical errors and continue to process a given header.
    encoding

    The optional encoding parameter specifies the character set to represent the result by. If omitted or null, iconv.internal_encoding will be used.

    Return Values

    Returns a decoded MIME field on success, or false if an error occurs during the decoding.

    Changelog

    Version Description
    8.0.0 encoding is nullable now.

    Examples

    Example #1 iconv_mime_decode() example

    <?php
    // This yields "Subject: Prüfung Prüfung"
    echo iconv_mime_decode("Subject: =?UTF-8?B?UHLDvGZ1bmcgUHLDvGZ1bmc=?=",
    0, "ISO-8859-1");
    ?>

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    User Contributed Notes 3 notes

    up
    3
    Dirk Becker
    11 years ago
    While creating a new webmailer, I had to coop with a lot of mails and only half of them were correct encoded!
    Often the text is tagged as ISO but in real its UTF :/

    After trying a lot of solutions and combination a found a way which seems to work for all our mails. Maybe its usefull to someone else too.

    <?php

    function mime_encode($data)
    {
    $resp = imap_utf8(trim($data));

    if(    preg_match("/=\?/", $resp))
    $resp = iconv_mime_decode($data, ICONV_MIME_DECODE_CONTINUE_ON_ERROR, "ISO-8859-15");

    if(    json_encode($resp) == 'null')
    $resp = utf8_encode($resp);

    return     $resp;
    }

    ?>
    up
    1
    koronci at aol dot com
    11 years ago
    A simple and working solution for latin encoding supports Slovak, Czech, Russian ect.
    <?php iconv("utf-8", "windows-1250", $SomeWeirdText); ?>

    specially for those who strugle with imap_mime_header_decode
    up
    1
    dido dot sevilla at gmail dot com
    19 years ago
    In PHP versions that have imap_mime_decode built in, it's possible to emulate the operation of this function:

    <?php
    function iconv_mime_decode($str, $mode=0, $charset="UTF-8")
    {
    $data = imap_mime_header_decode($str);
    if (    count($data) > 0) {
    // because iconv doesn't like the 'default' for charset
    $charset = ($data[0]->charset == 'default') ? 'ASCII' : $data[0]->charset;
    return(    iconv($charset, $charset, $data[0]->text));
    }
    return(    "");
    }
    ?>

    I've only tried to use this code snippet to decode ISO-2022-JP messages to UTF-8, but I see no reason why it shouldn't work in other cases.
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