Passing filename with spaces as mail attachment w. PHP script

[mac]

Sometime ago I got through David a great little PHP script to attach files selected via Alfred to IBM notes emails. I use it a lot and works fine as long as the file does not contain any spaces in the name. If there are spaces that attachment process does not work. The script is the following:

$files="{query}";$files=explode(" ", $files);
$url="mailto:?";
foreach($files as $f):
$url.="&attach=".urlencode($f);
endforeach;
echo $url;


exec('open /Applications/IBM\ Notes.app "'.$url.'"');

My question - how can the url encode() be modified so that filenames with spaces are also properly inserted into my emails. I've tried looking without success.

 

 

[deanishe]

It looks to me like your problems start in the first line with explode(). This assumes space is the separator between filepaths, so it will turn any path with a space in it into two invalid paths.

[jdfwarrior]

Sometime ago I got through David a great little PHP script to attach files selected via Alfred to IBM notes emails. I use it a lot and works fine as long as the file does not contain any spaces in the name. If there are spaces that attachment process does not work. The script is the following:

$files="{query}";$files=explode(" ", $files);
$url="mailto:?";
foreach($files as $f):
$url.="&attach=".urlencode($f);
endforeach;
echo $url;


exec('open /Applications/IBM\ Notes.app "'.$url.'"');

My question - how can the url encode() be modified so that filenames with spaces are also properly inserted into my emails. I've tried looking without success.

 

Try just modifying the explode() command to look like this...

$files = explode("\t",$files);

That will split the input into parts using a tab as a separator instead of a space.

[mac]

Thanks for your answers (got back from a long trip to try things out). Definitely looks like the explode() command in the script is the culprit. Unfortunately 

$files = explode("\t",$files);

doesn't work either. As an example I tried it on the following filename

 

"ESA PB-EO(2015)16 SAOCOM-CS – Status and Way forward  v3 clean"

 

getting the result "File does not exist" with spaces replaced by plus signs i.e. "ESA+PB-EO/(2015/)16+....". Is there a workaround that you know off to get the filename in a consistent way for the encoding in PHP ?

 

 

Thanks again for your help

 

Mac

[deanishe]

The filename appears to be properly encoded. However, it's impossible to say for sure because you haven't actually posted the encoded URI that isn't working. When you ask for help, posting the thing that's actually causing the problem (in this case, your URL) is always a good idea.
 
As a result this is a pure guess, but you could try rawurlencode instead of urlencode.
 
If you'd like more than guesswork, please provide at least an actual example of your script's output.
 
A further issue is that the command open /Applications/IBM\ Notes.app <some URL> is almost certainly incorrect. You probably want open -a IBM\ Notes.app <some URL>, which will open the specified URL with the specified application (note the -a option). Your command doesn't open the URL with IBM Notes, it opens IBM Notes and the URL.