Custom html content for core/email_template

Question

I'm using Magento's core/email_template model to send an email (as opposed to core/email as I want to add an attachment).

I already have a $html variable which I would like to set as the body. Is there any way I can do so, i.e not have to specify a transaction email ID? Here is the code below:

$mailTemplate->setDesignConfig(array('area'=>'frontend', 'store'=>1))
->sendTransactional(
    $template_id, 
    $sender,
    $to_email,
    $to_name 
);

Answer 1

The sendTransactional() method just delegates to Mage_Core_Model_Email_Template::send(), so just call the send method directly instead.

public function send($email, $name = null, array $variables = array()) 

EDIT: You can use the Zend_Mail class if you just want to send an email with an attachment. For example:

$mail = new Zend_Mail();
$mail->setFrom("email@example.com","From name");

$mail->setSubject("Mail subject");
$mail->setBodyHtml($html);

$attachment = file_get_contents("path/to/your/attachment.pdf");

$file = new Zend_Mime_Part($attachment);
$file->type        = 'application/pdf';
$file->filename    = $filename;
$file->disposition = Zend_Mime::DISPOSITION_ATTACHMENT;
$file->encoding = Zend_Mime::ENCODING_BASE64;
$mail->addAttachment($file);

$mail->send();

Hope this is what you looking for.