Newsletters to Kindle

Uses IMAP to check a mailbox, converts HTML newsletter emails to PDFs and sends them to an Amazon Kindle email address

Process

1. Checks a folder in an email inbox, via IMAP
2. Collects the email and converts it into a PDF
3. Sends the PDF to Amazon, to convert into an ePub format and place in your Amazon Kindle library
4. Deletes the email

Installation

Official installation method is via composer and its packagist package alexpcooper/newsletters-to-kindle.

$ composer require alexpcooper/newsletters-to-kindle

Usage

<?php

require_once __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

$newsletter2kindle = new newsletters2kindle();
$newsletter2kindle->kindle_email = 'your-kindle-email@kindle.com';
$newsletter2kindle->imap_email   = 'your-email@address.com';
$newsletter2kindle->imap_user    = 'your-email@address.com';
$newsletter2kindle->imap_pass    = 'emailpassword';
$newsletter2kindle->imap_host    = 'imap.host.com';
$newsletter2kindle->imap_port    = 993;
$newsletter2kindle->imap_dir     = 'Inbox';

$newsletter2kindle->checkMail();

Debug

As the process of sending an email to a 3rd party (Amazon) is "fire and forget", without any confirmation or failure, there are two optional parameters, in the event of needing to troubleshoot.

Add one or both of these prior to calling checkMail().

$newsletter2kindle->debug               = true; // false by default or when not specified
$newsletter2kindle->delete_mail_after   = false; // true by default or when not specified

Parameters

Parameter	Explanation
kindle_email	Used to send the PDF email to, so that it goes to your Amazon account
imap settings	Used to both check an email directory, such as your inbox, for an email to convert, as well as to send the PDF to Amazon as the FROM address
imap_dir	This can be your inbox or a subfolder, eg. "Inbox", "[Gmail]/All Mail", "my-newsletters", etc.
debug	Prints out progress or any issues as it goes; for debugging only (defaults to false)
delete_mail_after	Keeps the mail in the mailbox after processing (defaults to true) - note that subsequent requests will pick up the same email again

Included Packages

With thanks to the following for these dependancies;

• https://github.com/mpdf/mpdf
• https://github.com/zbateson/mail-mime-parser
• https://github.com/swiftmailer/swiftmailer

Requirements

• php's IMAP library (eg. extension=imap.so) needs to be enabled in your php.ini file

Troubleshooting

• Ensure that your "kindle_email" address is correct as it appears on your Amazon account for receiving documents (see Edit Your Send to Kindle Email Address)
• Ensure that your sending email address is permitted to send documents to your Amazon Kindle (see Add an Email Address to Receive Documents in Your Kindle Library)

Known Issues

• Due to the composition of emails, occasionally a block of style tags may be printed onto the end document. This is caused by external sources, such as includes / images, being pulled in after the email is parsed.
• At present the Kindle document appears in Amazon without an Author being populated, even though it's on the PDF. This seems to be caused on Amazon's side, when they convert the document.