Mail with Outlook

[jgamble]

Thanks to the code written in various Q&A sections, i wrote my own function to send mail using Outlook. This function uses Win32::OLE (of course), and returns 0 on failure and 1 for success. It does *not* open or close Outlook, which was outside the scope of the function - you can open or close it yourself in the calling code. I'll follow up with a similar function that uses the CDONTS lib instead of Outlook.

sub outlook_mailer
{
  my(%mail_props) = @_;

  unless (exists $mail_props{'to'} and defined $mail_props{'to'})
  {
    carp "No Addressee to send mail to.\n";
    return 0;
  }

  my $mail = new Win32::OLE('Outlook.Application');
  my $item = $mail->CreateItem(0);  # 0 = mail item.

  unless ($item)
  {
    carp "Outlook is not running, cannot send mail.\n";
    return 0;
  }

  $item->{'Subject'} = $mail_props{'subject'} || '[No Subject]';
  $item->{'To'} = join(";", split(/[ ,;]+/, $mail_props{'to'}));
  $item->{'Body'} = $mail_props{'body'} || "\r\n";

  $item->{'From'} = $mail_props{'from'} if (exists $mail_props{'from'}
+);
  $item->{'Cc'} = $mail_props{'cc'} if (exists $mail_props{'cc'});
  $item->{'Bcc'} = $mail_props{'bcc'} if (exists $mail_props{'bcc'});

  $item->{'Importance'} = (exists $mail_props{'importance'})?
        $mail_props{'importance'}:
        1;  # 2=high, 1=normal, 0=low

  if (exists $mail_props{'attachments'})
  {
    my $attach = $item->{'Attachments'};

    foreach my $attach_file (@{ $mail_props{'attachments'} })
    {
      if ($attach_file and -f $attach_file)
      {
        $attach->add($attach_file);
      }
    }
  }

  $item->Send();
  return 1;
}