Sending HTML Mail

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

Brothers,
I am attempting to write a script that will send and html newsletter for a client. Consider the following code:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

    use strict;
    use warnings;

use Mail::Sender;

my $sender = new Mail::Sender {smtp => 'localhost'};

$sender->OpenMultipart({
    from => 'marketing@mydomain.foo',
    to => 'marketlist@mydomain.foo',
    subject => 'we are so great!',
    type => 'multipart/related'
});

$sender->Attach({
    description => 'html body',
    ctype => 'text/html; charset=us-ascii',
    encoding => '7bit',
    disposition => 'NONE',
    file => 'mes.html'
});

$sender->Attach({
    description => 'vici gif',
    ctype => 'image/gif',
    encoding => 'base64',
    disposition => "inline; filename=\"VICI.gif\";\r\nContent-ID: <img
+1>",
    file => 'VICI.gif'
});

$sender->Close;
[download]

I've had limited success with this. Some email clients receive the html and image in the body others (Outlook) receive both as attachments. Is there a way I can ensure that the html and images will come in the message body?

Thanks,

Neil Watson
watson-wilson.ca

Comment on Sending HTML Mail Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Sending HTML Mail by gav^ (Curate) on May 03, 2002 at 20:00 UTC
See MIME::Lite - For outging mail with attachments. You might have better luck putting the images on a webserver somewhere and referencing them in the HTML. It's a more polite way to do things. Also calling `scrub` on the MIME::Lite object seems to work better with some older clients. Hope this helps. gav^	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Sending HTML Mail by Dog and Pony (Priest) on May 03, 2002 at 20:00 UTC
I seem to recall something about using `multipart/alternative` as type instead of `multipart/related`, but I am not sure. It might be worth a shot? Either way, it is probably a header problem if different email clients present it differently. You have moved into a dark place. It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Sending HTML Mail by neilwatson (Priest) on May 03, 2002 at 21:13 UTC
Tried `multipart/alternative`. Same result. Neil Watson watson-wilson.ca	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Re: Re: Sending HTML Mail by Fastolfe (Vicar) on May 04, 2002 at 16:20 UTC
Try nesting them. The multipart/alternative content type is meant more for saying "I can show you this type of content, or this type, you decide." You're doing it right with the multipart/related to combine images with an HTML content type. `multipart/alternative multipart/related text/html image/gif whatever/else text/plain (a plain-text version)` [download] If that doesn't work, I might want to see the actual output of your script, if you can reduce it to something small-ish.	[reply] [d/l]