How to send HTML body email with multiple text attachments using sendmail

Question

I want to send a HTML file as message body and want to attach multiple text files to this email message.

Since html file needs to be sent, sendmail has to be used ( I could not do it using mailx ).

How do you send HTML body email and multiple text attachments using sendmail?

Answer 1

I don't think sendmail is going to help you with that. Go for a client like mutt, and do e.g. mutt -a file1 -a file2 -- recipient@do.main. Or go for perl.

Answer 2

Assuming you have uunecode available in your system you can send email with multiple attachments like this:

#!/bin/bash

...
...
...
BOUNDARY="=== This is the boundary between parts of the message. ==="

{
   echo  "From: $MAILFROM"
   echo  "To: $MAILTO"
   echo  "Subject:" $SUBJECT
   echo  "MIME-Version: 1.0"
   echo  "Content-Type: MULTIPART/MIXED; "
   echo  "    BOUNDARY="\"$BOUNDARY\"
   echo
   echo  "        This message is in MIME format.  But if you can see this,"
   echo  "        you aren't using a MIME aware mail program.  You shouldn't "
   echo  "        have too many problems because this message is entirely in"
   echo  "        ASCII and is designed to be somewhat readable with old "
   echo  "        mail software."
   echo
   echo  "--${BOUNDARY}"
   echo  "Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII"
   echo
   echo  "This email comes with multiple attachments."
   echo
   echo
   echo  "--${BOUNDARY}"
   echo  "Content-Type: application/zip; charset=US-ASCII; name="${ZIPFILE}
   echo  "Content-Disposition: attachment;   filename="`basename ${ZIPFILE}`
   echo
   uuencode $ZIPFILE $ZIPFILE
   echo
   echo  "--${BOUNDARY}--"
   echo  "Content-Type: application/pdf; charset=US-ASCII; name="${PDFFILE}
   echo  "Content-Disposition: attachment;   filename="`basename ${PDFFILE}`
   echo  
   uuencode $PDFFILE $PDFFILE
   echo
   echo  "--${BOUNDARY}--"
} | /usr/lib/sendmail -t

Answer 3

Here is a bash script I use to send reports I generate to people. They are sent as attachments. Place your HTML in the "body" variable of the script. I will leave the parametrization of the variables up to you.

#!/bin/bash

function get_mimetype(){
file --mime-type "$1" | sed 's/.*: //'
}

from="me.last@company.com"
to="some.one@companyBlah.com"
subject="Your Report my Lord"
boundary="=== Boundary ==="
body="The reports are attached to this email"
declare -a attachments
attachments=( "fileOne.out" "fileTwo.out" "fileThree.out" "file-et-cetera.out")

# Build headers
{

printf '%s\n' "From: $from
To: $to
Subject: $subject
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"$boundary\"

--${boundary}
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"US-ASCII\"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

$body
"

for file in "${attachments[@]}"; do

      [ ! -f "$file" ] && echo "Attachment $file not found, omitting file" >&2 && continue

        mimetype=$(get_mimetype "$file")

  printf '%s\n' "--${boundary}
Content-Type: $mimetype
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$file\"
  "

  base64 "$file"
  echo
done

# print last boundary with closing --
printf '%s\n' "--${boundary}--"

} | sendmail -t -oi