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

Hi fellow monks,

A friend of mine recently asked if I could write a perl program that would send an email from a file. It seems he would like to periodically email a list of his students from a file he has written ( lecture notes, homework assignments, etc. ). So, this is the 'project' so far: 


#!\usr\bin\perl -wT

use strict;
use Net::SMTP;
use CGI qw ( :standard );

my ( $from, $to, $subject, $message, $address, 
$server, $myAddress );

$from  = param( "from" );
$to = param( "to" );
$subject = param( "subject" );
$message = param( "message" );
$address = param( "address" );
$server = param( "server" );
$myAddress = param( "myAddress" );

my $smtp = new Net::SMTP( "$server", Hello => "$server" )
or die "Ughh! Unable to send email : $!\n";

$smtp->to( "$to );
$smtp->mail( "$myAddress" );
$smtp->data();
$smtp->datasend( "From: $from\n" );
$smtp->datasend( "To: $to\n" );
$smtp->datasend( "Subject: $subject\n\n\n" );
$smtp->datasend( "$message\n" );
$smtp->dataend();
$smtp->quit();

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If the $message that he wanted to send was stored in a file called "syllabus.txt", how would I include that file name in place of the message text?

Thanks in advance,

-Katie.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Sending email from a file.
by ibanix (Hermit) on Dec 05, 2002 at 08:38 UTC
    Mail::Sender will probally do what you want. 
    #!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Mail::Sender;

# How these are defined is left as an exercise to the reader
my ($from, $to, $subject, $message, $file, $server);

# Create our message handler
ref (my $mail = new Mail::Sender { smtp => $server } ) or die "Mail er
+ror: $Mail::Sender::Error\n";

# Message header
$mail->Open({ from => $from, to => $to, subject => $subject }) or die 
+"Mail error: $Mail::Sender::Error\n";

$mail->Body;

# Add the "intro" message
$mail->SendLineEnc("$message\n");

# Open $file, adding contents to message
open(FILE, "$file");

while(<FILE>) { $mail->SendLineEnc("$_\n"); }

# Close & send message

$mail->Close;

    [download]
    Alternately, if you wanted to send the file as and attachment, you could do:
    $mail->Attach({ description => 'Programming Perl 101 Syllabus', 
                ctype => 'text/plain', 
                encoding => '7bit', 
                disposition => 'attachment; filename="syllabus.txt"; t
+ype="Text file"', 
                file => 'syllabus.txt' } );

    [download]
    instead of opening and reading the file.

    $ echo '$0 & $0 &' > foo; chmod a+x foo; foo;
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Re: Sending email from a file.
by robartes (Priest) on Dec 05, 2002 at 08:55 UTC
    Or, in the spirit of the camel, Another Way To Do It is to just slurp the file into $message: 
    open HOMEWORK, "<syllabus.txt" or die "Blerch: $!\n";
local $/=undef;
$message=<HOMEWORK>;
# Send it on as you did above.

    [download]

    CU
    Robartes-

    Update: fixed age-old gotcha of forgetting comma in open.

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(z) Re: Sending email from a file.
by zigdon (Deacon) on Dec 05, 2002 at 13:42 UTC

    I think you're asking how to upload a file in CGI. If that's not your question, please just ignore me :)

    Just create a multipart form with a file field:

    <FORM METHOD=POST ACTION=/cgi-bin/upload.pl>
<INPUT TYPE=FILE NAME=UploadFile>
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT>
</FORM>

    [download]

    And then read the file in your CGI:

    use CGI;
my $q = new CGI;
my $filename = $q->param('UploadFile');
while (<$filename>) {
  # do something with each line of the file
}

    [download]

    See the CGI manpage - search for "CREATING A FILE UPLOAD FIELD"

    -- Dan

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