I made experiment by sending html email using Microsoft Outlook with an image embed in it (not as an attachment), and used imap functions to retrieve the email from the mailserver and displayed it on the browser. After days of learning how to read the structure and find the html part of multipart email to be displayed, I found out codes I don't understand in the html part:

1. There are two characters ('3D') scattered all over the html code. I don't know what this means, but after I removed them with str_replace() function, it doesn't matter. But if somebody can explain what is this and why this happens, I need those helps

2. I can't display the image embed on the html code. After I read the <img> tag, I found out another question. The tag displayed : <img height="100" width="100" src="cid:image01.gif@[codes I don't understand]">. Is somebody knows what happen to the 'src' attribute? And does it only happen if your retrieve html email from Outlook Express?
Thanks for your helps

> There are two characters ('3D') scattered all over the html code.
> I don't know what this means

The is an encoding used on the message, quoted-printable, specifically. This isn't just some random characters inserted into the message.

http://www.php.net/quoted_printable_decode
http://www.php.net/imap_qprint

> I can't display the image embed on the html code. After I read the <img> tag, I
> found out another question. The tag displayed : <img height="100" width="100"
> src="cid:image01.gif@[codes I don't understand]">. Is somebody knows what happen
> to the 'src' attribute? And does it only happen if your retrieve html email from
> Outlook Express?

The cid is a pointer that refers to the inline attachment where the embedded file is located. If you look at the MIME source of the message you'll find that CID in the headers for the image attachment.

MIME mail is very complicated, I suggest you use a prebuilt library for this, unless you are interested in getting to know MIME for academic reasons. One such library is a package I wrote for PEAR called Mail_IMAP, http://pear.php.net/Mail_IMAP

HTH!

Regards,
Rich

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