display HTML text in body using unix mailX ???? - Page 2

lyradsr · #8 (**permalink**) 07-29-2008

It is actually possible, and easy to send email in html format.
Here is an example perl script to do just that.

Quote:

#!/usr/bin/perl

########################
# Variables
########################
$mail="/usr/lib/sendmail -t"; # Path to the sendmail program and switches
$mail="/usr/bin/mailx -t"; # Path to the mailx program and switches

$temp="/home/cager/htmlcode"; #<---- File and Path to the HTML
$rcpt="returntome\@xxxx.com"; #<----- The return to email address
$users ="sendtome\@xxxx.com"; #<---- List of "to" email addresses
$ccusers= ""; #<---- List of Cc'd email addresses
$bccusers=""; #<---- List of Bcc'd email addresses
$subject="Get off the web and work"; #<----Title of the email

########################
# Create the Email Pipe
########################
open(MAIL, "| $mail") or die "Can not access $mail $!\n";

########################
# Open the HTML
########################
open(TEMP, "$temp") or die "Can not open $temp $!\n";

########################
# Send the html to the Pipe
########################
print MAIL "From: $rcpt\n";
print MAIL "To: $users\n";
print MAIL "Cc: $ccusers\n";
print MAIL "Bcc: $bccusers\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n";
print MAIL "Content-Type: text/html;\n";

while (<TEMP>) { #<---- insert the html into the body of the email
print MAIL; #<---- send the email
}
close (TEMP);
close (MAIL);

Give that a shot.

era · #9 (**permalink**) 07-30-2008

You don't really need Perl for that, either. And you should make sure there is an empty line between the headers and the body.

Code:

( cat <<HERE; cat /path/to/file.html) | sendmail -oi -t
From: sender@example.com
To: recipients@example.net
Subject: We hate you, so we send HTML instead of plain text
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/html
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit

HERE

You should properly have Mime-Version and Content-Transfer-Encoding headers as well as Content-Type. The issue of correct MIME transfer encoding is one of the many possible complexities which is simply ignored here (and one of the reasons simple shell scripts don't work well in the general case).

If your cat can combine standard input with a regular file, more power to you.

Code:

cat - /path/to/file.html <<HERE | sendmail -oi -t
...

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