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

I am attempting to send an email message with an attached text file.
Here is the code that creates the file in question:

if($#ARGV==-1)
{
    #use current date
    $date='date--d'1 day ago'+'%Y-%m-%d'';
    chop($date);
}
else
{
    print"USAGE: summary.pl[date yyyy-mm-dd]\n";
}
$rptname="summary".$date.".txt";

print"Date:  ",$date,"\n";
print"Report: ",$rptname,"\n";
open(RPT,">$rptname")||warn "Unable to open report file: $!\n";

[download]

And here is the code that should send me the attached file.
The name of the file should be (in this case): summary2000-07-23.txt


use MIME::Lite;

$msg=MIME::Lite->new(
            From    =>'root@localhost.mycompany.com',
            To    =>'myname@mycompany.com',
            Subject    =>'Summary Report',
            Type    =>'multipart/mixed');

$msg->attach(Type =>'TEXT',
         Data =>"Summary Report for yesterday");

$msg->attach(Type =>'TEXT',
         Path =>'$rptname',
         Filename =>'summary'.$date.'.txt');

$msg->send;

[download]


However, when I run this program, I don't receive anything in my mailbox.
Any ideas? TStanley

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: MIME::Lite
by young perlhopper (Scribe) on Jul 24, 2000 at 22:18 UTC
    Everything looks pretty reasonable, so you should probably check the return values (i.e. $!) of the functions as you call them. At the very least do: 

    $msg->send or die "couldn't send!!!";

    [download]

    Then, when you know which function call fails, the answer may be immediately obvious, or at the very least the monks will have a little more to go on. (if all the calls succeed i would say take a good look at your mail server)

    Good Luck,
    Mark

[reply]
[d/l]
      I added the "or die" to the end of the send function. No luck there.
      It seems like it is actually sending the message, but not going anywhere.
      I do know that our sendmail actually works, so it could possibly be that
      MIME::Lite needs configuring, although I have no clue as to how to go about it.

      Thanks for the help though

      TStanley
[reply]
        You need to check the return codes from ALL your function calls. For all you know, the new failed and you're calling all the other methods on a null function.

        Always check your return codes.

        *Woof*

[reply]
[d/l]
Re: MIME::Lite
by le (Friar) on Jul 24, 2000 at 23:19 UTC
    First, your method of getting the date isn't very "perlish". I'd done this: 
    my ($day, $month, $year) = (localtime)[3,4,5];
$year += 1900;
$month += 1;
if ($month < 10) {
    $month = "0" . $month;
}
$day--; # We want yesterdays date, yeah? Ok, this fails for the first 
+of the month, I don't have the time to hack that :)
my $date = "$year-$month-$day";

    [download]
    (Besides that: did you copy and paste the code snippets? If yes, then you won't have a date at all, if I understand your code right, you tried to use backticks to get the date, but I can see just plain quotes.)

    And what happens if you change the second "attach" type to "text/plain"?
[reply]
[d/l]
      The $day-- doesn't look so good.
      It will be much easier and safer to use Time::Local

      quoting from there: 
      use Time::Local 'timelocal_nocheck';

        {
            # The 365th day of 1999
            print scalar localtime timelocal_nocheck 0,0,0,365,0,99;


            # The twenty thousandth day since 1970
            print scalar localtime timelocal_nocheck 0,0,0,20000,0,70;


            # And even the 10,000,000th second since 1999!
            print scalar localtime timelocal_nocheck 10000000,0,0,1,0,
+99;
        }

      [download]
      Another option is to subtract 60*60*24 from the epoch time and use that.

      Cheers.
[reply]
[d/l]
Re: MIME::Lite
by redmist (Deacon) on Jul 24, 2000 at 23:44 UTC
    One problem may be that you are using the logical or operator in list context where there are precedence issues (at least with die). Try using or instead.

    open(RPT,">$rptname")||warn "Unable to open report file: $!\n";

    should be: 
    open(RPT, ">$rptname") or warn "Unable to open report file: $!\n";

    [download]


    redmist
    redmist.dyndns.org
    redmist@users.sourceforge.net
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