RE: sending email

[lachoy]

I find Mail::Sendmail to be easy, reliable and cross-platform.

However, also note that sending mail with attachments is really easy with MIME::Lite (although you need to install Net::SMTP to use this, as other folks have noted). MIME::Lite is available through Activestate's PPM, which makes life easier.

Check out this simple cross-platform (tested on Linux and NT). NT gives an annoying: "The system cannot find the path specified" error, but still works.

There are, of course, lots of ways to improve it (use a 'magic' file to discern the MIME type, use Getopt::Long for a more coherent command line, allow the user to set more parameters, etc.)

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;

use MIME::Lite;

my $DEBUG    = 0;
my %TYPES = (
  csv  => [ 'text/csv', '8bit' ],
  gif  => [ 'image/gif', 'base64' ],
  tiff => [ 'image/tiff', 'base64' ],
  tif  => [ 'image/tiff', 'base64' ],
  jpeg => [ 'image/jpeg', 'base64' ],
  jpg  => [ 'image/jpeg', 'base64' ],
  zip  => [ 'application/zip', 'base64' ],
  gz   => [ 'application/gzip', 'base64' ],
  html => [ 'text/html', '8bit' ],
  htm  => [ 'text/html', '8bit' ],
  pdf  => [ 'application/pdf', 'base64' ],  
);

{
 my $subject  = shift;
 my $filetype = shift;
 my $filename = shift;
 my $email    = shift;
 die "Usage: $0 subject file-type filename email\n"  unless ( $email )
+;

 my %mail = ( subject => $subject, to => $email, from => 'webmaster@in
+tes.net' );
 my $msg = new MIME::Lite( From => $mail{from},
                           To => $mail{to},
                           Subject => $mail{subject},
                           Data => 'Emailing file; should be attached'
+,
                           Type => 'text/plain' );
 my $type = $TYPES{ lc $filetype } || [ 'text/plain', '8bit' ];
 $msg->attach( Type => $type->[0],
               Encoding => $type->[1],
               Path => $filename );     
 MIME::Lite->send( 'smtp', 'localhost', Timeout => 20 );
 $msg->send || die "Cannot send message: $!";
}