Mailx send html message

Question

I want to send a html message with Mailx. When I try the following command

mailx -s "Subject"  user@gmail.com  < email.html

I get the content of email.html in plain text. In the message the header Content-Type is set to text/plain. The -a option tries to send a file so I didn't find out how to modify the header. This answer almost worked, it sets well the Content-Type to text/html but doesn't substitute the default Content-Type which is text/plain.

mailx -s "$(echo -e "This is the subject\nContent-Type: text/html")" user@gmail.com  < email.html

gives this result :

From: send@gmail.com
To: user@gmail.com
Subject: This is the subject
Content-Type: text/html
Message-ID: <538d7b66.Xs0x9HsxnJKUFWuI%maikeul06@gmail.com>
User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.4 7/29/08
MIME-Version: 1.0
 boundary="=_538d7b66.z5gaIQnlwb1f/AOkuuC+GwF1evCaG/XIHQMbMMxbY6satTjK"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--=_538d7b66.z5gaIQnlwb1f/AOkuuC+GwF1evCaG/XIHQMbMMxbY6satTjK
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

<html>
<body>
<p>Helo wolrd</p>
</body>
</html>

PS : I also tried with uuencode. When I try to display the message in the webmail I get a blank page...

There are multiple variants of `mailx` in common use. You may be better off with `mutt` if you can't be sure which of them is installed. See this near-duplicate: https://stackoverflow.com/a/48588035/874188 — tripleee, Feb 02 '18 at 17:38

score 36 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 03 '14 at 09:05

36

It's easy, if your mailx command supports the -a (append header) option:

$ mailx -a 'Content-Type: text/html' -s "my subject" user@gmail.com < email.html

If it doesn't, try using sendmail:

# create a header file
$ cat mailheader
To: user@gmail.com
Subject: my subject
Content-Type: text/html

# send
$ cat mailheader email.html | sendmail -t

answered Jun 03 '14 at 09:05

dogbane

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Thanks I'm trying to do so. Seems I'm gonna have to configure sendmail to validate your answer ;) – user3580716 Jun 03 '14 at 09:53
28

regarding `man mailx` the flag `-a attaches a given file to the massage`. There seems to be different mailx versions around http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/15463 – jerik Oct 29 '14 at 16:40
4

The default with RHEL 6 (don't have 7 at my fingers) is that /bin/mail is /bin/mailx. With mailx -a is "append file". With mail that ISN'T mailx -a is append header. – Petro Jul 19 '17 at 19:13
1

A bit late for user3580716 but any linux system that can send mail should have a sendmail command that will work. It may not be actually sendmail, but a compatible mode of the system mailer (postfix, exim, whatever), but it should work for this case. – Dan Pritts Sep 13 '19 at 13:51

score 17 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 29 '14 at 17:40

There are many different versions of mail around. When you go beyond mail -s subject to1@address1 to2@address2

With some mailx implementations, e.g. from mailutils on Ubuntu or Debian's bsd-mailx, it's easy, because there's an option for that.
```
mailx -a 'Content-Type: text/html' -s "Subject" to@address <test.html
```

With the Heirloom mailx, there's no convenient way. One possibility to insert arbitrary headers is to set editheaders=1 and use an external editor (which can be a script).

## Prepare a temporary script that will serve as an editor.

## This script will be passed to ed.
temp_script=$(mktemp)
cat <<'EOF' >>"$temp_script"
1a
Content-Type: text/html
.
$r test.html
w
q
EOF
## Call mailx, and tell it to invoke the editor script
EDITOR="ed -s $temp_script" heirloom-mailx -S editheaders=1 -s "Subject" to@address <<EOF
~e
.
EOF
rm -f "$temp_script"

With a general POSIX mailx, I don't know how to get at headers.

If you're going to use any mail or mailx, keep in mind that

This isn't portable even within a given Linux distribution. For example, both Ubuntu and Debian have several alternatives for mail and mailx.
When composing a message, mail and mailx treats lines beginning with ~ as commands. If you pipe text into mail, you need to arrange for this text not to contain lines beginning with ~.

If you're going to install software anyway, you might as well install something more predictable than mail/Mail/mailx. For example, mutt. With Mutt, you can supply most headers in the input with the -H option, but not Content-Type, which needs to be set via a mutt option.

mutt -e 'set content_type=text/html' -s 'hello' 'to@address' <test.html

Or you can invoke sendmail directly. There are several versions of sendmail out there, but they all support sendmail -t to send a mail in the simplest fashion, reading the list of recipients from the mail. (I think they don't all support Bcc:.) On most systems, sendmail isn't in the usual $PATH, it's in /usr/sbin or /usr/lib.

cat <<'EOF' - test.html | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t
To: to@address
Subject: hello
Content-Type: text/html

EOF

For Heirloom mailx, the solution will not work, because content-type header will be ignored. When a message is edited while being composed, its header is included in the editable text. **'To:', 'Cc:', 'Bcc:', 'Subject:', 'From:', 'Reply-To:', 'Sender:', and 'Organization:'** fields are accepted within the header, other fields are ignored. — TerrenceSun, May 06 '16 at 03:09

score 16 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 23 '21 at 10:11

16

I had successfully used the following on Arch Linux (where the -a flag is used for attachments) for several years:

mailx -s "The Subject $(echo -e \\\nContent-Type: text/html)" user@gmail.com < email.html

This appended the Content-Type header to the subject header, which worked great until a recent update. Now the new line is filtered out of the -s subject. Presumably, this was done to improve security.

Instead of relying on hacking the subject line, I now use a bash subshell:

(
    echo -e "Content-Type: text/html\n"
    cat mail.html
 ) | mail -s "The Subject" -t user@gmail.com

And since we are really only using mailx's subject flag, it seems there is no reason not to switch to sendmail as suggested by @dogbane:

(
    echo "To: user@gmail.com"
    echo "Subject: The Subject"
    echo "Content-Type: text/html"
    echo
    cat mail.html
) | sendmail -t

The use of bash subshells avoids having to create a temporary file.

edited Apr 23 '21 at 10:11

Samuel Phan

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answered Aug 02 '17 at 15:40

Mark Grimes

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4
8

Strictly speaking, shouldn't you also have a `MIME-Version: 1.0` header? – tripleee Feb 02 '18 at 17:52
should your mailx subject echo command include the closing parenthesis? – edwardsmarkf Feb 01 '21 at 20:30
I used the 1st method you suggested, and it worked, but I can't attach files this way. Is it even possible when sending html content? – yagev Nov 22 '21 at 15:39
The first subshell method did not work for me. The html text was just pasted in as text. – RonJohn Feb 11 '22 at 18:20
I find the echo escape-escape-escape... hard to follow. I find this one easier: `echo "${message}" | mailx -s "$( printf '%s\n%s' "${subject}" "Content-Type text/html" )" "${recipient}"` – bgStack15 May 17 '23 at 20:11

score 0 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 22 '14 at 14:04

0

EMAILCC=" -c user1@dominio.cl,user2@dominio.cl"
TURNO_EMAIL="user@dominio.cl"

mailx $EMAILCC -s "$(echo "Status: Control Aplicactivo \nContent-Type: text/html")" $TURNO_EMAIL < tmp.tmp

edited Dec 22 '14 at 14:04

Mathias Müller

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13
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answered Dec 22 '14 at 13:44

Mafiuks

11

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

0

Well, the "-a" mail and mailx in Centos7 is "attach file" not "append header." My shortest path to a solution on Centos7 from here: stackexchange.com

Basically:

yum install mutt
mutt -e 'set content_type=text/html' -s 'My subject' me@my.com < msg.html

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1
1

answered Sep 29 '16 at 15:35

Don Law

1,329
13
7

Indeed, using Mutt is a much more reliable way, especially with CentOS 6. There is literally no need to waste time any more time trying to get "mail" or "mailx" to work with custom headers... – fevangelou Nov 15 '21 at 18:06

score -3 · Answer 6 · edited May 13 '15 at 11:42

If you use AIX try this This will attach a text file and include a HTML body If this does not work catch the output in the /var/spool/mqueue

#!/usr/bin/kWh
if (( $# < 1 ))
 then
  echo "\n\tSyntax: $(basename) MAILTO SUBJECT BODY.html ATTACH.txt "
  echo "\tmailzatt"
  exit
fi
export MAILTO=${1-noreply@visweb.co.za}
MAILFROM=$(whoami)
SUBJECT=${2-"mailzatt"}
export BODY=${3-/apps/bin/attch.txt}
export ATTACH=${4-/apps/bin/attch.txt}
export HST=$(hostname)
#export BODY="/wrk/stocksum/report.html"
#export ATTACH="/wrk/stocksum/Report.txt"
#export MAILPART=`uuidgen` ## Generates Unique ID
#export MAILPART_BODY=`uuidgen` ## Generates Unique ID
export MAILPART="==".$(date +%d%S)."===" ## Generates Unique ID
export MAILPART_BODY="==".$(date +%d%Sbody)."===" ## Generates Unique ID
(
echo "To: $MAILTO"
 echo "From: mailmate@$HST "
 echo "Subject: $SUBJECT"
 echo "MIME-Version: 1.0"
 echo "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"$MAILPART\""
 echo ""
 echo "--$MAILPART"
 echo "Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=\"$MAILPART_BODY\""
 echo ""
 echo ""
 echo "--$MAILPART_BODY"
 echo "Content-Type: text/html"
 echo "Content-Disposition: inline"
 cat $BODY
 echo ""
 echo "--$MAILPART_BODY--"
 echo ""
 echo "--$MAILPART"
 echo "Content-Type: text/plain"
 echo "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"$(basename $ATTACH)\""
 echo ""
 cat $ATTACH
 echo ""
 echo "--${MAILPART}--"
  ) | /usr/sbin/sendmail -t

That might work, but it's pretty horrible. The redundant `export` statements should probably already scare you a little. — tripleee, Nov 16 '15 at 17:06
I'm guessing `#!/bin/kWh` is a typo for `#!/bin/ksh`, or is there really a shell called kilowatt-hours on AIX? — tripleee, Nov 16 '15 at 17:07
Many better scripts at this near-duplicate: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3317174/sending-html-mail-using-a-shell-script — tripleee, Apr 07 '18 at 12:11

Mailx send html message

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