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Sending E-mail attachment wihout using external module

by DreamT (Pilgrim)
on Nov 18, 2009 at 07:48 UTC ( [id://807868]=perlquestion: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??

DreamT has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi!
My quest is to send a file via e-mail on a system where it's not possible to install a module for the purpose. So, I'm "stuck" with the following:
$mailprog = "/usr/sbin/exim -t -i -f"; open (MAIL, "|$mailprog"); print MAIL "From: Me <me\@myself.com>\n"; print MAIL "To: john\@doe.com\n"; print MAIL "Subject: Test"; print MAIL "This is a test\n"; close(MAIL);
(of course there are other solutions available since there's "more than one way to do it"...)

So, my question is, is it possible to expand the code snippet above to attach a file?

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Sending E-mail attachment wihout using external module
by moritz (Cardinal) on Nov 18, 2009 at 08:04 UTC
    As soon as one of the headers is not a string literal, but rather a variable coming from the outside of your program, it's much harder to correctly deal with it - you have to strip newlines and maybe quotes, escape non-ASCII-characters and so on.

    Which is why I recommend to look at Yes, even you can use CPAN and see if you really can't use a module. MIME::Lite appears to be a pure-Perl module, and thus you should be able to use it everywhere where you can put scripts by yourself.

    Perl 6 - links to (nearly) everything that is Perl 6.
Re: Sending E-mail attachment wihout using external module
by virtualsue (Vicar) on Nov 18, 2009 at 09:36 UTC
    moritz is correct. The odds are very high that if you can write code on this system, then you can install a module with the code. You can learn to do this a lot faster than you can rewrite MIME::Lite (e.g.), though you can always have a look at the source on the CPAN.
Re: Sending E-mail attachment wihout using external module
by ww (Archbishop) on Nov 18, 2009 at 12:38 UTC

    You already have some specific answers. These are some additional observations:

    1. ...wihout (sic) using external module
      and
    2. ...where it's not possible to install a module for the purpose.

    As a general rule (though not in this case), the phrase in 1 is justified only when the writer is interested in reinventing the wheel for educational purposes or cannot compile the module in question for the OS in use.

    The clause in 2 is highly unlikely to be true (in terms of desired functionality) on any server for which the writer has the necessary permissions to install a script.

    The reading suggested by moritz provides detail and in the Monastery's Tutorials section, you may find Installing Modules on a Web Server relevant, along with others in Installing Modules.

      Hmmm,

      In general I think you have a point, but beware of generalising too much - there are circumstances e.g. air gapped security sensitive systems, in which the propositions don't hold in a formal sense, but constraints e.g. security certification, on the installation of external, particularly public, code have the direct effect of causing them [the propositions] to appear to hold.

      Been there, seen it, eaten the T-shirt ... and bloody frustrating, but educational (because you are forced to re-invent the wheel in the interests of expediency), it is.

      A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))

        ++ for an exception.

        But note the qualifiers, "as a general" (which I understand to mean there are exceptions) and "highly unlikely" which (implicitly at least), allows for exceptions?

Re: Sending E-mail attachment wihout using external module
by zentara (Archbishop) on Nov 18, 2009 at 13:05 UTC
    See Re: How do I send an email with Perl (including an attachment)? or do something as simple as this: (beware there are pitfalls in this method, but it works)
    #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use MIME::Base64; my $SENDFILE = 'z.jpg'; my $FROMUSER = 'zentara'; my $FROMEMAIL = 'zentara@zentara.zentara.net'; my $TOUSER = 'zentara'; my $TOEMAIL = 'zentara@zentara.zentara.net'; open(F_MAIL,"|/usr/sbin/sendmail -t"); my $boundary = "----------90125"; print F_MAIL <<END_OF_MAIL; Precedence: list From: $FROMUSER <$FROMEMAIL> To: $TOUSER <$TOEMAIL> MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: File attachment test Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"$boundary\" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --$boundary Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\" Here is the body of the message. A file attachment is also provided b +elow. --$boundary Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=\"$SENDFILE\" Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64 Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$SENDFILE\" END_OF_MAIL #open(F_SEND,$SENDFILE) || &Error("Cannot open sendfile for MIME encod +ing"); open(F_SEND,$SENDFILE) || die ("Cannot open sendfile for MIME encoding +"); while (read(F_SEND,my $buf, 60 * 57 ) ) { print F_MAIL encode_base64($buf); } close(F_SEND); print F_MAIL <<END_OF_MAIL; --$boundary-- END_OF_MAIL close(F_MAIL);

    I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth.
    Old Perl Programmer Haiku

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