I'm working on a project where I'm going to need to send a decently-formatted table of things via email -- GMail, unfortunately, which I've found needs special lines for encoding the thing to "quoted-printable" to not destroy the nice formatting I've set up in the script.

The REAL script will get its data from a database, but I've put the following dummy script together to play with the modules I assume are necessary to get the email sent and look nice.

... and it's not working. I get blank emails with subject lines like "ARRAY(0x2730298)". I have futzed and futzed with the script-let below ... maybe a monk smarter than me (most of you) can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use IO::All;
use Email::MIME;
use Email::Sender::Simple qw(sendmail);

unlink 'mailtext.txt';

##################################################
# just an experiment with perlform to try and make
# a nice output for the dashboard
# ################################################

# set some vars so we can have stuff to print
# what are we likely gonna wanna print?

my $tweet_id     = 0;
my $tweet_cat    = ''; # this is tweet category
my $tweet_obj    = ''; # this is tweet object: obsid? bibcode?
my $tweet_obj_2  = ''; # secondary id - for instance, seq_nbr
my $tweet_date   = '';
my $tweet_weight = 0;


open (MAILTEXT, '>>', 'mailtext.txt');

print(MAILTEXT "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8\Content-Transf
+er-Encoding: quoted-printable\n");

format TWIT =
@<<<<<<   @<<<<<     @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<   @<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<   @<<
+<<<<<<<<     ^<<<<<<<<<
$tweet_id, $tweet_cat, $tweet_obj, $tweet_obj_2, $tweet_date, $tweet_w
+eight
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+------------------------
.

format TWIT_TOP =
======================================================================
+========================
twit_id   twit_cat   twit_obj               twit_obj_2             dat
+e_active     twit_weight
======================================================================
+========================
.

select(MAILTEXT);
$~ = TWIT;
$^ = TWIT_TOP;

my @id     = (50, 51, 52, 53, 54);
my @cat    = ("BIB", "BIB", "DAT", "PLE", "UNP");
my @obj    = ("2014HEAD...1411609Z", "2016SPIE.9905E..45G","20201", "2
+018ApJ...855..100S", "19288");
my @obj_2  = (254, 29, 'X-ray Clusters', 5.1, 502938);
my @date   = ("02/02/18","03/23/18","03/22/18","03/13/18","03/05/18");
my @weight = (2, 5, 4, 3, 1);

my $i = 0;

foreach (@id) {
    $tweet_id     = $_;
    $tweet_cat    = $cat[$i];
    $tweet_obj    = $obj[$i];
    $tweet_obj_2  = $obj_2[$i];
    $tweet_date   = $date[$i];
    $tweet_weight = $weight[$i++];
    write;
}

my @parts = (
    Email::MIME->create(
        attributes => {
            filename     => "mailtext.txt",
            content_type => "text/plain",
            encoding     => "quoted-printable",
            name         => "CDA Twitter Dashboard",
        },
        body => io( "mailtext.txt")->utf8->all,
    ),
);
 
my $email = Email::MIME->create(
    header_str  => [
        From     => [ "cdatwitter\@grumble.edu" ],
        To         => [ "gbecker\@grumble.edu" ],
        Subject => [ "Yes this is for Twitter" ],
    ],
    parts       => [ @parts ],
);

sendmail($email);
[download]

I'm sure the script sucks in many ways, but it's the emailing I'm concerned about here. Any nudges would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Glenn