SMAIL

SMAIL is a command line tool for sending HTML e-mails. It uses secured ESMTP to communicate with the server and you can even store your credentials on your drive in the ~/.smailconf file. In the future, I would also like to find some time to encrypt the credentials using a master key.

Basic introduction - Let's send a simple e-mail

Okay. What will we need to do?

1. Create config.
2. Create .smail file to test on.
3. Change the mail file a bit.
4. Send the e-mail.
5. That's it. It is that simple.

1. Create config

Let's run:

smail init

This will guide us through config file creation. If you wish you can change it manually. The config file should be located in ~/.smailconf.

The smail init command will prompt for your password and the password will be written in plaintext into the config file. So please keep that in mind.

2. Create a test mail

To create a simple .smail file you can run:

smail create <filename> <?filename> <?filename> ...

This will create a file with template in <filename>.smail for each entry. When using SMAIL normally you can understandably skip this step and create the file manually.

3. Change the mail file

The default file is just a template. It should look like this:

==SUBJECT
Test e-mail
==FROM
Alice Smith;[email protected]
==TO
[email protected]
John Smith;[email protected]
==STYLE
body {
    font-family: Arial;
}
==BODY
<h1>Hello, world!</h1>
<p>This is a test mail file from SMAIL.</p>
<p>
    You can find SMAIL source code
    <a href=\"https://github.com/omekina/smail\">here</a>
    if you are interested. &#128522;
</p>

Now you need to change the individual fields. Or you can keep them and watch the e-mail get lost somewhere in the cloud. :) The fields: SUBJECT, FROM and TO are special. They are directly processed by the executable. So please keep them clean. You can work as you please with the other fields. (for more info refer to the documentation bellow)

The fields FROM and TO can contain either just some e-mail or name and e-mail. If you wish to include name you can use the following syntax: Some Name;[email protected] (name and e-mail are separated by delimiter ; character)

It is also worth mentioning that the field TO can contain multiple addresses. And they should be separated by the \n (newline) character.

4. Let's send it

smail send <filename> <?filename> <?filename> ...

Specify the names of the mail files (again... without the .smail extension) you just created after the send command. And there it is.

If everything went well you should see something like this:

Connected
Completed ESMTP handshake
Logged in

Mail sent:
Test e-mail

Of course, this is going to vary depending on the amount of files being sent and their subjects (if nothing goes wrong). :)

How SMAIL works

Init

SMAIL init is a nice config creator tool. It creates a config file at filepath ~/.smailconf. Then the init command asks you about some credentials and settings to write into the file.

SMAIL also checks if the file exists, so it does not overwrite.

smail init

If you want to overwrite existing config file you can use:

smail init --overwrite

Custom config location

If you wish to override the default ~/.smailconf location you can use the --config flag. You must use absolute path when specifying custom config.

smail --config=/home/user/email/personal/.smailconf send <filename> <?filename> <?filename> ...

The custom config flag works on any smail command which uses the config file.

smail --config=/home/user/email/work/.smailconf init

SMAIL file structure

This command creates a new e-mail file in your current working directory (so remember to cd properly). SMAIL e-mail files have file extension .smail. E-Mail files should have the following structure:

==SUBJECT
Test e-mail
==FROM
Alice Smith;[email protected]
==TO
[email protected]
John Smith;[email protected]
==STYLE
body {
    font-family: Arial;
}
==BODY
<h1>Hello, world!</h1>
<p>This is a test mail file from SMAIL.</p>
<p>
    You can find SMAIL source code
    <a href=\"https://github.com/omekina/smail\">here</a>
    if you are interested. &#128522;
</p>

The create command just creates a template for your e-mail in the .smail file, so you have some starting point.

The ==<name> marked parts are sections. Sections are basically search-and-replace items. Section name is looked up in the configuration file template and replaced with the section from the current e-mail file.

To see more info about this. Take a look into newly created configuration file (init).

Escaping lines

If you want to send a line that begins with the == character sequence you can use the \ character to escape the whole line. If the \ character is the first character on a line it will get removed. Anything after it will remain.

Line:

\\==

will resolve to:

\==

and will not get treated as a section flag. Since the first two letters before resolving aren't ==.

Piping .smail files from other programs

SMAIL can also accept .smail files from stdin. If no filepath is specified with the send command, SMAIL will default to reading from stdin.

cat test.smail | smail send

The command above can be achieved with SMAIL alone, but if you wish to generate a file on the fly and send it immediately... this might come in handy.

Specifying .smail file in command line argument

If stdin is not an option in your case and your implementation can set command line arguments, then this could be a good option for you.

./smail --config="smailconf" --stdin="==SUBJECT\nTest e-mail\n==FROM\nAlice Smith;[email protected]\n==TO\[email protected]\n==STYLE\nbody {font-family: Arial;}\n==BODY\n<h1>Hello, world</h1>" send

This will override the stdin with whatever you put in the --stdin flag (but with a small catch).

Anytime the program sees the string literal \n in the --stdin flag it will replace it with an actual newline.

If you wish to send an actual \n in your mail then keep in mind that we are in HTML. \n

If this doesn't work for you, you can also use --argument-override-newline and specify which line termination sequence you would like to use.

./smail --config="smailconf" --argument-override-newline="a" --stdin="==SUBJECTaTest e-mila==FROMaAlice Smith;[email protected][email protected]==STYLEabody {font-fmily: Aril;}a==BODYa<h1>Hello, world</h1>" send

The termination sequence can be however long your RAM can handle.

Create

smail create <filename> will create a file at <filename>.smail. The file will have some predefined contents (which you can then change). As we discussed in the file structure chapter, it is not very hard to structure a .smail file. You can create one by hand, but the

smail create <filename> <?filename> <?filename> ...

command will help to get you started.

TIP: Do not specify the .smail file extension. As I already mentioned, this extension will be added by SMAIL.

Send

smail send <filename> <?filename> <?filename> ... will send the mail according to settings in config file and the contents of the target .smail file. Do not specify the .smail file extension as it is added automatically.

How to pronounce SMAIL

Since quite a lot of software defines pronunciation, I thought SMAIL should too.

This is the official pronunciation:

/siː-miːl/ or sea-meal

Or just pronounce it how you like, I don't care.