Send email with image attachment in node.js

Question

Currently I am able to send emails in node.js using code along the lines of:

var nodemailer = require("nodemailer");

var smtpTransport = nodemailer.createTransport("SMTP",{
   service: "Gmail",
   auth: {
       user: "gmail.user@gmail.com",
       pass: "gmailpass"
   }
});

smtpTransport.sendMail({
   from: "My Name <me@example.com>", // sender address
   to: "Your Name <you@example.com>", // comma separated list of receivers
   subject: "Hello ✔", // Subject line
   text: "Hello world ✔" // plaintext body
}, function(error, response){
   if(error){
       console.log(error);
   }else{
       console.log("Message sent: " + response.message);
   }
});

How can I send an attachment of an uploaded image from an html form in this email? Also, can I send the image in the email without uploading it to the serve? If not, that's okay. This is my html form:

<form id="mainForm">
    <input type="file" id="fileUpload">
    <input type="submit" id="submit" name="submit">
</form>

How can I take the file and include it in the email I send using node.js?

possible duplicate of [How to attach file to an email with nodemailer](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21934667/how-to-attach-file-to-an-email-with-nodemailer) — royhowie, Aug 31 '15 at 23:16
No only because I need to upload the image from an html form — thenodecoder, Aug 31 '15 at 23:19
Save the image then attach it, as explained in the linked question. — royhowie, Aug 31 '15 at 23:19
Are you using Express? If so, try [Multer](https://github.com/expressjs/multer) to parse a form/multipart `POST` request and grab the file. — Armin Cifuentes, Aug 31 '15 at 23:20
@thenodecoder Since Node runs on the server, yup. That's pretty much it. — Armin Cifuentes, Aug 31 '15 at 23:21
Is there a way to delete the file off of the server after the email is sent? — thenodecoder, Aug 31 '15 at 23:25
you could also send the image as a base64 string to the server and could bypass multipart and just use the body parser and add the base64 string to the attachment array — pizzarob, Aug 31 '15 at 23:34
and you dont need to save the file to disc, so you dont need to worry about deleting it — pizzarob, Aug 31 '15 at 23:37
awesome ideas (converting to base64 string and emailing). So no upload to the server is needed. Thanks guys — thenodecoder, Sep 01 '15 at 00:02

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 31 '15 at 23:29

You could try something like this. Use busboy to get the file and then once you get the file convert it to base64 and add it to the attachment property for you mail options. The only thing is i dont know if the file argument comes back as a buffer. If it doesnt you just need to convert that file to base 64 and will be able to send it as an attachement

var app = express();
var Busboy = require('busboy');
var nodemailer = require("nodemailer");

var smtpTransport = nodemailer.createTransport("SMTP",{
    service: "Gmail",
     auth: {
         user: "gmail.user@gmail.com",
         pass: "gmailpass"
     }
});

app.post('/email', function(req, res){
    var busboy = new Busboy({ headers: req.headers });
    var attachments = [];

    var mailOptions = {
        from: "My Name <me@example.com>", // sender address
        to: "Your Name <you@example.com>", // comma separated list of receivers
        subject: "Hello ✔", // Subject line
        text: "Hello world ✔" // plaintext body
    };

    busboy
        .on('file', function(fieldname, file, filename, encoding, mimetype){
            attachments.push({
               filename: filename,
               content: file.toString('base64'),
               encoding: 'base64'
            });
        })
        .on('finish', function() {
            mailOptions.attachments = attachments;
            smtpTransport.sendMail(mailOptions, function (err, info) {
               if (err) {
                   //handle error
               }
                // email sent
           });
        });
});

I know this is old but I have a question. FYI I'm using `multer` npm which is very similar to this approach. But is it possible to prevent the email from being sent if the attachement is not a type of image. (e.g. prevent .docx files from being sent)? — Loizos Vasileiou, Jul 08 '20 at 11:31
You could check the mimetype of the file and verify it matches one of your supported files — pizzarob, Jul 09 '20 at 14:59

Send email with image attachment in node.js

1 Answers1