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iconv_mime_decode

(PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

iconv_mime_decodeDecodes 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");
?>

See Also

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User Contributed Notes 3 notes

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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;
}

?>
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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
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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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