Need Help Inserting Newlines Into Body of Alert E-mails

asmcmrr

Our techs would like to see the thread (messages & responses) for a ticket when it is assigned to them.

I have added a "%thread" token that can be substituted for the ticket message thread in e-mail templates. I construct the thread by first pulling all messages associated with the ticket ID from the database and then pulling all responses. The goal is to concatenate them into a string that is substituted into assignment alert e-mails. This has been added as $ticket->getThread(). getThread return a single string, $threadtext.

I can get that part to work, however I'd like to make a newline between each message and response and that part isn't working. The intention is to separate each message or response by a "\n" (or "\r\n" if needed, apache/php/MySQL host is Windows based). I have tried injecting both "\n" and "\r\n" into $threadtext, however the slashes appear to be getting stripped out and leaving just an "n" or "rn" instead of generating new lines in the resulting body of the e-mail that is sent.

In looking over the code for $email->send(...) I don't understand what the following is doing:

$body = stripslashes(preg_replace("/(\r\n|\r)/s", "\n", trim($message)));

preg_replace appears to consolidate "\r\n" and "\r" into just "\n", but is stripslashes then supposed to convert the resulting "\n"'s into newlines when it strips the slashes? If not, I don't understand why the preg_replace is first consolidating the newline tokens and then rendering them useless.

Can I safely remove stripslashes from this line of code?

asmcmrr

Solved. The $threadtext string was being constructed using single quotes instead of double quotes.

When stripslashes is invoked, a string in double quotes will be parsed for special characters (such as "\n") before stripping slashes, while a string in single quotes will not.

kyle4812

Can you explain how to do this change a little better.

It looks like something i would like to but cant understand where you made the changes, ect..

asmcmrr

Sorry I haven't been on in awhile and I'll have to reconstruct the mod somewhat from memory. The SQL queries can be trimmed down, there is some unused info they are also pulling:

file: class.ticket.php

add:

function getThread() {

//get messages

$sql='SELECT msg.msg_id,msg.created,msg.message,count(attach_id) as attachments FROM '.TICKET_MESSAGE_TABLE.' msg '.

' LEFT JOIN '.TICKET_ATTACHMENT_TABLE." attach ON msg.ticket_id=attach.ticket_id AND msg.msg_id=attach.ref_id AND ref_type='M' ".

' WHERE msg.ticket_id='.db_input($this->getId()).

' GROUP BY msg.msg_id ORDER BY created';

$msgres =db_query($sql);

$threadtext = "";

$messagecount = 0;

$responsecount = 0;

while ($msg_row = db_fetch_array($msgres)) {

$messagecount = $messagecount + 1;

$threadtext = $threadtext."\nMessage #".$messagecount." (".Format:($msg_row).") - ".Format:($msg_row)."\n";

//get answers for messages

$sql='SELECT resp.*,count(attach_id) as attachments FROM '.TICKET_RESPONSE_TABLE.' resp '.

' LEFT JOIN '.TICKET_ATTACHMENT_TABLE." attach ON resp.ticket_id=attach.ticket_id AND resp.response_id=attach.ref_id AND ref_type='R' ".

' WHERE msg_id='.db_input($msg_row).' AND resp.ticket_id='.db_input($this->getId()).

' GROUP BY resp.response_id ORDER BY created';

$resp =db_query($sql);

while ($resp_row = db_fetch_array($resp)) {

$responsecount = $responsecount + 1;

$respID=$resp_row;

$threadtext = $threadtext."\nResponse #".$responsecount." (".Format:($resp_row)." by ".$resp_row.") - ".Format:($resp_row)."\n";

}

$msgid =$msg_row;

}

return Format:($threadtext);

}

In function replaceTemplateVars($text), change the $search and $replace assignments to:

$search = array('/%id/','/%ticket/','/%email/','/%name/','/%subject/','/%topic/','/%phone/','/%status/','/%priority/',

'/%dept/','/%assigned_staff/','/%createdate/','/%duedate/','/%closedate/','/%url/','/%thread/');

$replace = array($this->getId(),

$this->getExtId(),

$this->getEmail(),

$this->getName(),

$this->getSubject(),

$this->getHelpTopic(),

$this->getPhoneNumber(),

$this->getStatus(),

$this->getPriority(),

($dept?$dept->getName():''),

($staff?$staff->getName():''),

Format:($this->getCreateDate()),

Format:($this->getDueDate()),

Format:($this->getCloseDate()),

$cfg->getBaseUrl(),

$this->getThread());

Now in your e-mail templates you can use the %thread tag. Example of the "%thread" text in a new "Ticket %ticket Assigned to you" e-mail:

Message #1 (Thu, Feb 3 2011 10) - Ticket created by staff

Response #1 (Thu, Feb 3 2011 10 by xxxxxxxxxx) -

User needs to have their home drive assignment updated in AD

asmcmrr

FYI, someone else created the same type of "thread" token for the same reason (Blackberry ticket alerts). You may prefer their implementation:

(http://osticket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3857)