Mail not send if preferred_mail_format is NULL

Question

I had some contacts who complain of not receiving mailings. In communication preferences, email formats were 'both' for all contacts. Quite by chance, I went to look in the log file, where there were messages:

CiviMail will not send an empty email body, Skipping: xxxxx

After having researched this message in the php code, I analyzed CRM/Mailing/BAO/Mailing.php and saw that the body of the message is deleted if $contact['preferred_mail_format'] is neither Both, Text or HTML.

I went in the database, and for all contacts who did not receive the mailings, I've seen that the preferred_mail_format column contained NULL.

I have corrected by hand and all mails are gone.

I wonder if we should not: - Or, if preferred_mail_format is neither Both, Text or HTML, put a mail contains in a default format (Text, Html,?) - Or, when calculating the number of recipients (in the mailing of the editorial page), display a warning indicating the potential problems.

Regards.

Answer 1

We fixed this quite old behaviour by hacking CRM/Mailing/BAO/Mailing.php around line 1295 by overriding:

if ($text && ($test || $contact['preferred_mail_format'] == 'Text' ||
    $contact['preferred_mail_format'] == 'Both' ||
    ($contact['preferred_mail_format'] == 'HTML' && !array_key_exists('html', $pEmails))
  )
) {
  $textBody = implode('', $text);
  if ($useSmarty) {
    $textBody = $smarty->fetch("string:$textBody");
  }
  $mailParams['text'] = $textBody;
}

if ($html && ($test || ($contact['preferred_mail_format'] == 'HTML' ||
      $contact['preferred_mail_format'] == 'Both'
    ))
) {
  $htmlBody = implode('', $html);
  if ($useSmarty) {
    $htmlBody = $smarty->fetch("string:$htmlBody");
  }
  $mailParams['html'] = $htmlBody;
}

with:

$pmf = isset($contact['preferred_mail_format']) ?   $contact['preferred_mail_format'] : 'Both';
if ($pmf != "Both" && $pmf != "Text" && $pmf != "HTML") {
    $pmf = "Both";
}
if ($text && ($test || $pmf == 'Text' || $pmf == 'Both' ||
        ($pmf == 'HTML' && !array_key_exists('html', $pEmails))
)
) {
    $textBody = implode('', $text);
    if ($useSmarty) {
        $textBody = $smarty->fetch("string:$textBody");
    }
    $mailParams['text'] = $textBody;
}

if ($html && ($test || ($pmf == 'HTML' || $pmf == 'Both' ))) {
    $htmlBody = implode('', $html);
    if ($useSmarty) {
        $htmlBody = $smarty->fetch("string:$htmlBody");
    }
    $mailParams['html'] = $htmlBody;
}