Deprecation on localhost/mail.php due to php.net/function.hexdec on PHP 7.4

[masiorama]

ISSUE TYPE

• Bug Report

I switched to PHP 7.4 the ambient for some of my projects, and visiting devilbox/mail dashboad I notice a lot of warning like this:

Deprecated: Invalid characters passed for attempted conversion, these have been ignored in /var/www/default/include/vendor/Mail/mimeDecode.php on line 838

Checking the php function it is stated that

hexdec() will ignore any non-hexadecimal characters it encounters. As of PHP 7.4.0 supplying any invalid characters is deprecated.

Right now I have not time to investigate a bit more.
Will write down more infos as soon as possible.
Cheers!

[tiktaz]

I'm facing the same problem. Is it possible to add this correction around line 838 of /var/www/default/include/vendor/Mail/mimeDecode.php ? I dunno how to update this file to submit a PR.

if (ctype_xdigit($matches[0])) {
    return chr(hexdec($matches[0));
}

[llaville]

Perharps a better alternative will be to replace outdated PEAR Mail_mimeDecode package, by a new alternative solution.

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4721410/best-way-to-handle-email-parsing-decoding-in-php

I suggest eXorus answer with his solution https://github.com/php-mime-mail-parser/php-mime-mail-parser

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[cytopia]

@masiorama @tiktaz can you guys let me know how to reproduce it. I'm unable to get this error with PHP 7.4

[masiorama]

Hi @cytopia neither I was able to reproduce the error. Since then (when I opened the issue) I migrated my dev env to WSL2, installing Devilbox inside Ubuntu (on WSL2), and I have the previous env no more. What I can say is that building up the same stack I see no error in the mail section of Devilbox dashboard.

[cytopia]

Alright, I'll give it a few more days to wait for @tiktaz and check if he's still facing this issue and if not I'm gonna close this one.

[lesteak]

I've been experiencing this issue for some time with PHP7.4 and still am after updating to Devilbox 1.10.1 today. Thanks

[cytopia]

I've been experiencing this issue for some time with PHP7.4 and still am after updating to Devilbox 1.10.1 today. Thanks

@lesteak Can you provide instructions on how one could reproduce this issue.

[tiktaz]

Sorry I quit my last job and I'm not using Devilbox for the new one.
The way to get the bug was to sent a email containing some HTML tags and try to read them from localhost/mail.php.

[cytopia]

Perharps a better alternative will be to replace outdated PEAR Mail_mimeDecode package, by a new alternative solution.

See https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4721410/best-way-to-handle-email-parsing-decoding-in-php

I suggest eXorus answer with his solution https://github.com/php-mime-mail-parser/php-mime-mail-parser

@llaville I had a look, unfortunately it's not gonna do it, as I do need support starting from PHP 5.3 onwards.

[cytopia]

I am going to close this issue due to not being able to reproduce it (might have gone away with recent updates).

What I tried:

• Html emails
• Unicode characters
• Really large emails
• PHP 7.4 -> PHP 8.1

I've never encountered the deprecation warning.

If you encounter this again, please let me know exactly how it was triggered

[massiws]

This error came up again after last update v-3.0.0 (both beta-0.1 and beta-0.2).
Tested with the same results on:

• Laravel project
• sending Password Reset link (Laravel default notification)
• both PHP 8.0 and PHP 8.1
• HTML email
• short text including characters è, and é (decimal 232, 233)

[cytopia]

@massiws can you reproduce this behaviour with the "Send test Email" feature in the intranet?

[masiorama]

It showed up again to me too.
This morning I upgraded from 2.2.0 to 2.4.0, and on PHP 8.0 it shows the same deprecation errors @massiws pasted right above.

[cytopia]

I would require a command or a php snippet with which I can produce an email that triggers this error.

[masiorama]

I am not sure what you are suggesting @cytopia. I am using no snippet at all, it is enough to visit devilbox "catch all emails" page to see all those deprecations. It is not related to any custom php project/script from my side.
I guess @massiws could be on the same page.

[cytopia]

@masiorama what I am suggesting is any means of creating such an email. Whenever I create emails with UTF-8 chars they all display nicely on the vhost page. I don't see the errors, thus I can't really troubleshoot it. So all I need is the piece of code with which you send the email. Does this make sense now?

[masiorama]

So you mean the deprecation is triggered by any email already trapped by devilbox? If so tomorrow I will check if the multiple messages are gone if I remove all emails, and I will dig a bit deeper and keep you posted, thanks.

[cytopia]

So you mean the deprecation is triggered by any email already trapped by devilbox? If so tomorrow I will check if the multiple messages are gone if I remove all emails, and I will dig a bit deeper and keep you posted, thanks.

Yes, it is seemlingly the "view/show emails" page. Also @massiws mentioned that those mails were send by other means and the error is shown on that page.

[massiws]

@massiws can you reproduce this behaviour with the "Send test Email" feature in the intranet?

@cytopia , using the "Send test Email" I can't reproduce the error: let me know if I can investigate more deeply

[masiorama]

@cytopia indeed removing previous trapped emails the deprecations are gone and, as @massiws said, using "send test email" does not trigger them.

In my case the trapped emails were not customized "password recovery" email sent by laravel instance configured like this:

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=localhost
MAIL_PORT=25
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null

[cytopia]

I don't have a laravel setup (at least not one with a registration page). Can you share the mbox file from inside the container at /var/mail/devilbox (If it doesn't contain any sensitive information)

[cytopia]

I was able to reproduce it with PHPMailer. I've implemented the fix as suggested by @tiktaz in this PR #944

This fixes it (at least for my tests)

[massiws]

I don't have a laravel setup (at least not one with a registration page). Can you share the mbox file from inside the container at /var/mail/devilbox (If it doesn't contain any sensitive information)

Below the /var/mail/devilbox content (only plain text):

I can confirm that last beta-0.3 release fixes the issue.