Sending HTML mail using a shell script

Question

How can I send an HTML email using a shell script

User · Answer

Another option is using msmtp   What you need is to set up your  msmtprc with something like this  example is using gmail    account default host smtp gmail com port 587 from example gmail com tls on tls starttls on tls trust file    certs equifax pem auth on user example gmail com password  lt password gt  logfile    msmtp log   Then just call    echo  Subject   lt subject gt    echo  echo   lt message gt      msmtp  lt email domain tld gt    in your script  Update  For HTML mail you have to put the headers as well  so you might want to make a file like this   From  sender domain tld To  email domain tld Subject  Important message Mime-Version  1 0 Content-Type  text html   lt h1 gt Mail body will be here lt  h1 gt  The mail body  lt b gt should lt  b gt  start after one blank line from the header    And mail it like  cat email-template   msmtp email domain tld   The same can be done via command line as well  but it might be easier using a file

User · Answer

Using CentOS 7 s default mailx  appears as heirloom-mailx   I ve simplified this to just using a text file with your required headers and a static boundary for multipart mixed and multipart alternative setup   I m sure you can figure out multipart related if you want with the same setup   test txt   --000000000000f3b2150570186a0e Content-Type  multipart alternative  boundary  000000000000f3b2130570186a0c   --000000000000f3b2130570186a0c Content-Type  text plain  charset  UTF-8   This is my plain text stuff here  in case the email client does not support HTML or is blocking it purposely  My Link Here  lt http   www example com gt   --000000000000f3b2130570186a0c Content-Type  text html  charset  UTF-8    lt div dir  ltr  gt   lt div gt This is my HTML version of the email lt  div gt   lt div gt  lt br gt  lt  div gt   lt div gt  lt a href  http   www example com  gt My Link Here lt  a gt  lt br gt  lt  div gt   lt  div gt   --000000000000f3b2130570186a0c-- --000000000000f3b2150570186a0e Content-Type  text csv  charset  US-ASCII   name  test csv  Content-Disposition  attachment  filename  test csv  Content-Transfer-Encoding  base64 X-Attachment-Id  f jj5qmzqz0   The boundaries define multipart segments   The boundary ID that has no dashes at the end is a start point of a segment   The one with the two dashes at the end is the end point    In this example  there s a subpart within the multipart mixed main section  for multipart alternative    The multipart alternative method basically says  Fallback to this  IF the priority part does not succeed  - in this example HTML is taken as priority normally by email clients  If an email client won t display the HTML  it falls back to the plain text   The multipart mixed method which encapsulates this whole message  is basically saying there s different content here  display both    In this example  I placed a CSV file attachment on the email  You ll see the attachment get plugged in using base64 in the command below   I threw in the attachment as an example  you ll have to set your content type appropriately for your attachment and specify whether inline or not    The X-Attachment-Id is necessary for some providers  randomize the ID you set   The command to mail this is   echo -e   cat test txt  openssl base64 -e  lt  test csv  n--000000000000f3b2150570186a0e-- n    mailx -s  Test 2    echo -e   nContent-Type  multipart mixed  boundary   000000000000f3b2150570186a0e       -r fromaddress example com toaddress example com   As you can see in the mailx Subject line I insert the multipart boundary statically  this is the first header the email client will see   Then comes the test txt contents being dumped   Regarding the attachment  I use openssl  which is pretty standard on systems  to convert the file attachment to base64    Additionally  I added the boundary close statement at the end of this echo  to signify the end of the message   This works around heirloom-mailx problems and is virtually script-less    The echo can be a feed instead  or any other number of methods

User · Answer

First you need to compose the message  The bare minimum is composed of these two headers   MIME-Version  1 0 Content-Type  text html       and the appropriate message body    lt  DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC  -  W3C  DTD HTML 4 01 Transitional  EN   http   www w3 org TR html4 loose dtd  gt   lt html gt   lt head gt  lt title gt  lt  title gt   lt  head gt   lt body gt    lt p gt Hello  world  lt  p gt    lt  body gt   lt  html gt    Once you have it  you can pass the appropriate information to the mail command   body          echo  body   mail   -a  From  me example com    -a  MIME-Version  1 0    -a  Content-Type  text html    -s  This is the subject    you example com   This is an oversimplified example  since you also need to take care of charsets  encodings  maximum line length    But this is basically the idea   Alternatively  you can write your script in Perl or PHP rather than plain shell   Update  A shell script is basically a text file with Unix line endings that starts with a line called shebang that tells the shell what interpreter it must pass the file to  follow some commands in the language the interpreter understands and has execution permission  in Unix that s a file attribute   E g   let s say you save the following as hello-world      bin sh  echo Hello  world    Then you assign execution permission   chmod  x hello-world   And you can finally run it     hello-world   Whatever  this is kind of unrelated to the original question  You should get familiar with basic shell scripting before doing advanced tasks with it  Here you are a couple of links about bash  a popular shell   http   www gnu org software bash manual html node index html  http   tldp org HOWTO Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO html

User · Answer

In addition to the correct answer by mdma  you can also use the mail command as follows   mail person email com -s Subject Here  -a Content-Type  text html  charset   us-ascii      you will get what you re looking for   Don t forget to put  lt HTML gt  and  lt  HTML gt  in the email   Here s a quick script I use to email a daily report in HTML      bin sh  cat  path to tomorrow txt mysql -h mysqlserver -u user -pPassword Database -H -e  select statement   echo   lt  HTML gt      mail email email com -s Tomorrow s orders as of now  -a Content-Type  text html  charset   us-ascii

User · Answer

So far I have found two quick ways in cmd linux   Use old school mail   mail -s    echo -e  This is Subject nContent-Type  text html     test yahoo com   lt   mytest html   Use mutt   mutt -e  my hdr Content-Type  text html  test yahoo com  -s  subject   lt  mytest html

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The tags include  sendmail  so here s a solution using that     echo  From  me xyz com   echo  To  them xyz com   echo  MIME-Version  1 0  echo  Content-Type  multipart alternative     echo   boundary  some unique value ABC123 server xyz com    echo  Subject  Test HTML e-mail    echo     echo  This is a MIME-encapsulated message   echo     echo  --some unique value ABC123 server xyz com   echo  Content-Type  text html   echo     echo   lt html gt    lt head gt   lt title gt HTML E-mail lt  title gt   lt  head gt   lt body gt   lt a href  http   www google com  gt Click Here lt  a gt   lt  body gt   lt  html gt   echo  ------some unique value ABC123 server xyz com--      sendmail -t   A wrapper for sendmail can make this job easier  for example  mutt   mutt -e  set content type  text html   me mydomain com -s  subject   lt   message html

User · Answer

Mime header and from  to address also can be included in the html file it self   Command  cat cpu alert html    usr lib sendmail -t   cpu alert html file sample   From  donotreply example com To  admin example com Subject  CPU utilization heigh Mime-Version  1 0 Content-Type  text html   lt h1 gt Mail body will be here lt  h1 gt  The mail body should start after one blank line from the header    Sample code available here  http   sugunan net git slides shell cpu php

User · Answer

Another option is the sendEmail script http   caspian dotconf net menu Software SendEmail   it also allows you to set the message type as html and include a file as the message body  See the link for details

User · Answer

I ve been trying to just make a simple bash script that emails out html formatted content-type and all these are great but I don t want to be creating local files on the filesystem to be passing into the script and also on our version of mailx 12 5   the -a parameter for mail doesn t work anymore since it adds an attachment and I couldn t find any replacement parameter for additional headers so the easiest way for me was to use sendmail   Below is the simplest 1 liner I created to run in our bash script that works for us  It just basically passes the Content-Type  text html  subject  and the body and works   printf  Content-Type  text html nSubject  Test Email nHTML BODY lt b gt test bold lt  b gt     sendmail  lt Email Address To gt    If you wanted to create an entire html page from a variable an alternative method I used in the bash script was to pass the variable as below   emailBody  From   lt Email Address From gt  Subject  Test Content-Type  text html  charset   us-ascii    lt html gt   lt body gt  body  lt b gt  test bold lt  b gt    lt  body gt   lt  html gt    echo   emailBody    sendmail  lt Email Address To gt

User · Answer

You can use the option -o in sendEmail  to send a html email   -o message-content-type html to specify the content type of the email   -o message-file to add the html file to the email content   I have tried this option in a shell scripts  and it works   Here is the full command    usr local bin sendEmail -f sender test com -t  reciever test com  -s    smtp test com -u  Title  -xu sender test com -xp password    -o message-charset UTF-8     -o message-content-type html    -o message-file test html

User · Answer

cat  gt  mail txt  lt  lt EOL To   lt email gt  Subject   lt subject gt  Content-Type  text html   lt html gt    cat  lt report-table-  html gt   This report in  lt a href   lt url gt   gt SVN lt  a gt   lt  html gt   EOL   And then    sendmail -t  lt  mail txt

User · Answer

The question asked specifically on shell script and the question tag mentioning only about sendmail package  So  if someone is looking for this  here is the simple script with sendmail usage that is working for me on CentOS 8     bin sh TOEMAIL  quot youremail server com quot  REPORT FILE HTML  quot  REPORT FILE html quot  echo  quot Subject  EMAIL SUBJECT quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot MIME-Version  1 0 quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot Content-Type  text html quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt html gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt head gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt title gt Best practice to include title to view online email lt  title gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt  head gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt body gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt p gt Hello there  you can put email html body here lt  p gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt  body gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot  echo  quot  lt  html gt  quot   gt  gt   quot   REPORT FILE HTML  quot   sendmail  TOEMAIL  lt   REPORT FILE HTML

User · Answer

Heres mine  given  mail  is configured correctly    scanuser owncloud    vi sendMailAboutNewDocuments sh  mail -s  You have new mail  -a  Content-type  text html  -a  From  sender xxx com   1  lt  lt  EOF  lt html gt   lt body gt  Neues Dokument   2 lt br gt   lt a href  https   xxx index php apps files  dir  Post  gt Hier anschauen lt  a gt   lt  body gt   lt  html gt   EOF   to make executable   chmod  x sendMailAboutNewDocuments sh   then call     sendMailAboutNewDocuments sh recipient xxx com test doc

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