sendmailR (Part2): Sending files as mail attachments

Question

Following the directions provided in this related question, I was able to send html formated mail messages. Now the question is this: How should I modify the following code, in order to attach one or more files (of any type) to this message?

library(sendmailR)

from <- "<sendmailR@myserver.mycompany.com>"
to <- c("<someone@mycompany.com>","<anotherone@mycompany.com>")
subject <- iconv("Message Title", to = "utf8")

msg <- "<hr size='2' width='33%' style='text-align: left;'><font size='2'>
  <i>This email was sent automatically using <a href='http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/library/sendmailR/html/00Index.html' rel='nofollow' target='_blank'>sendmailR</a>.<br>
  Please do not reply directly to this e-mail.</i></font>"

msg <- iconv(msg, to = "utf8")

sapply(to,function(x) sendmail(from, x, subject, msg, control=list(smtpServer="###.###.###.###"), headers=list("Content-Type"="text/html; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed")))

I added code to handle multiple attachments here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2885660/how-to-send-email-with-attachment-from-r-in-windows/9131917#9131917 — ARobertson, Nov 29 '12 at 16:50

Rahul Premraj · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-13T07:46:40.637

With the mailR package (https://github.com/rpremraj/mailR), you could send HTML emails and additionally attach files with ease as below:

send.mail(from = "sender@gmail.com",
          to = c("recipient1@gmail.com", "recipient2@gmail.com"),
          subject = "Subject of the email",
          body = "<html>The apache logo - <img src=\"http://www.apache.org/images/asf_logo_wide.gif\"></html>",
          html = TRUE,
          smtp = list(host.name = "smtp.gmail.com", port = 465, user.name = "gmail_username", passwd = "password", ssl = TRUE),
          attach.files = c("./download.log", "upload.log"),
          authenticate = TRUE,
          send = TRUE)

Edit (2014-05-13):

mailR has been updated to allow different character encodings. Below is an example to send the message as UTF-8.

send.mail(from = "Sender Name <sender@gmail.com>",
          to = "recipient@gmail.com",
          subject = "A quote from Gandhi",
          body = "In Hindi :  थोडा सा अभ्यास बहुत सारे उपदेशों से बेहतर है।
                  English translation: An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.",
          encoding = "utf-8",
          smtp = list(host.name = "smtp.gmail.com", port = 465, user.name = "gmail_username", passwd = "password", ssl = T),
          authenticate = TRUE,
          send = TRUE)

I see that the last version also supports utf-8 encoding. Your answer deserves to be the accepted one. — gd047, May 13 '14 at 06:57

mbq · Answer 2 · 2013-01-17T13:42:20.567

8

A working (for me at least) function:

sendMessage<-function(contents,subject,from,to,attMIME,attachment,control){    
   msg<-list(contents,sendmailR:::.file_attachment(attachment,attachment,attMIME));
   sendmail(from=from,to=to,subject=subject,msg=msg,control=control);
}

Can be used like this:

png('a.png');hist(rnorm(700));dev.off()
sendMessage('Here you have a nice histogram:',
'Nice picture',
'from@example.com',
'to@example.com',
'image/png',
'a.png',list(smtpServer="..."))

Be warned that message sent by this example will probably be marked as spam, since it is a short text and a big picture -- nevertheless for larger messages and, let's say, pdf attachments it should go through. If not, you may consider adding also a text version of the message.

EDIT (less relevant now): The most deep insight on how to make MIME messages can be found here.

edited Jan 17 '13 at 13:42

answered Aug 26 '10 at 08:31

mbq

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I suppose I'm in one of my 'slow-witted' days. I must admit that I didn't understand if I can do it or not. If you think that it's possible, could you please use my example and transform it appropriately? – gd047 Aug 26 '10 at 09:23
Certainly you can, you must just squeeze the message and attachment(s) into this crazy format and pass it as an actual message. I am planning to edit it to usable code, still this will take some time because now I have some other things to do. – mbq Aug 26 '10 at 10:28
Hmmm. Error in waitFor(code) : SMTP Error: 5.7.1 Unable to relay for mymail@mycompany.com – gd047 Aug 26 '10 at 13:36
As long as you really tried mymail@mycompany.com, I am not surprised. If not, this is a network error or bad SMTP configuration. – mbq Aug 26 '10 at 14:03
One of the problems had to do with the use of 'control'. I used `sendMessage<-function(contents,subject,from,to,attMIME,attachment,ctrl)` and `sendmail(from,to,subject,msg,control=ctrl...` Now when I use google's smtpServer I get indeed a message with an attached picture, but I dont get the message body !!! – gd047 Aug 27 '10 at 08:35
I have found out where the problem is. I think I can work it out. – gd047 Aug 27 '10 at 10:52
No longer works with current sendmailR since that will wrap its own MIME structure around the body! – themel Jan 17 '13 at 09:41
@themel Thanks for noticing! I'll update the code, sendmailR seems to be able to do all the transcoding on its own. – mbq Jan 17 '13 at 10:45

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 06 '13 at 01:50

6

Note that current versions of sendmailR support attachments out of the box by making msg a list of mime_type objects, i.e. you'd now

sendmail( from,to,subject,
          msg=list(mime_part("Here's an attachment for you!"), 
          mime_part(attachmentFileName)), control, headers)`

edited Jun 06 '13 at 01:50

agstudy

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answered Jan 17 '13 at 09:43

themel

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score 5 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 30 '17 at 18:30

Here's an example that is setup for a daily batch job like setting using sendmail() in R (available with the package sendmailR) with multiple attachments (one CSV, one PDF):

Setting up date information to reference in the file names:

> yesterday_date_stuff  <- new.env()
> yesterday_date_stuff[['month']] <- strftime(Sys.Date()-1, format="%m")
> yesterday_date_stuff[['day']] <- strftime(Sys.Date()-1, format="%d")
> yesterday_date_stuff[['year']] <- strftime(Sys.Date()-1, format="%y")
> yesterday_date_stuff$month
[1] "03"
> yesterday_date_stuff$day
[1] "29"
> yesterday_date_stuff$year
[1] "17"

Now create some of the needed information for sendmail() function at the end of this post:

> from <- "youremail@whateveryourmailserveris.com"
> to <- c("person_A_to_send_email_to@whatever.com", "person_B_to_send_email_to@whatever.com", "person_C_to_send_email_to@whatever.com")
> subject <- paste("whatever you want subject line to read for batch job analyzing data for ", yesterday_date_stuff$month, "/", yesterday_date_stuff$day, "/", yesterday_date_stuff$year, sep="")
> body <- "Text to insert into the body of your email"

Specify mail server here:

> mailControl=list(smtpServer="mail.whateveryourmailserveris.com")

Define attachment 1 path and name:

> attachmentPath1 <- paste("file1name", "_", yesterday_date_stuff$month, yesterday_date_stuff$day, yesterday_date_stuff$year, ".csv", sep="")
> attachmentName1 <- paste("file1name", "_", yesterday_date_stuff$month, yesterday_date_stuff$day, yesterday_date_stuff$year, ".csv", sep="")

Define attachment 1 object:

> attachmentObject1 <- mime_part(x=attachmentPath1,name=attachmentName1)

Define attachment 2 path and name:

> attachmentPath2 <- paste("file2name", "_", yesterday_date_stuff$month, yesterday_date_stuff$day, yesterday_date_stuff$year, ".pdf", sep="")
> attachmentName2 <- paste("file2name", "_", yesterday_date_stuff$month, yesterday_date_stuff$day, yesterday_date_stuff$year, ".pdf", sep="")

Define attachment 2 object:

> attachmentObject2 <- mime_part(x=attachmentPath2,name=attachmentName2)

Now combine the body of the email with your attachments:

> bodyWithAttachment <- list(body,attachmentObject1, attachmentObject2)
> bodyWithAttachment
[[1]]
[1] "Text to insert into the body of your email"

[[2]]
<environment: 0x000000004efff188>
attr(,"class")
[1] "mime_part"

[[3]]
<environment: 0x00000000407a1b68>
attr(,"class")
[1] "mime_part"

Send the email using sendmail() function:

> sendmail(from=from, to=to, subject=subject, msg=bodyWithAttachment, control=mailControl)

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 26 '10 at 07:14

3

I would give up on using R for this. Working, cross-platform, stable solutions for doing this in Python exist, and you can call Python from R.

If I had to fit a mixed effects model in a Python program I'd call R to do it - if I want to do a systems task like send email in R I'll call Python to do it. Its worth learning if you don't know it yet.

answered Aug 26 '10 at 07:14

Spacedman

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If external tools are allowed, it is easier to just run `writeLines(message,p<-pipe('mutt -s blah -a att.ext -- mail@mail.com'));close(p)`. There is a Windows port of mutt, so it is cross-platform. – mbq Aug 26 '10 at 10:39

sendmailR (Part2): Sending files as mail attachments

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