Forum OpenACS Development: How do I send HTML email?

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1: How do I send HTML email?
Posted by Jade Rubick on 06/23/04 10:18 PM
Is it possible to send HTML emails using acs-mail-lite, and if so, where is a good example of how this is done. I haven't been able to find any documentation for this, or anything in the forums, although there are a lot of hints out there...
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2: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 06/23/04 11:10 PM
look at the mailinglist manager. This package (in contrib) sends out html, multipart, alternative and attachments through acs-mail-lite.

If you want to do the community a great favour, strip out this functionality of mailing list manager and add it to asc-mail-lite while enhancing the documentation in the great style you proved so many times on your site.

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7: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 2)
Posted by Steve Manning on 06/24/04 11:51 AM
Malte

How does this compare to using the acs_mail package?

acs_mail is documented here https://openacs.org/doc/acs-mail/openacs-mail.html. I've used it on one occasion and its powerful but quite complex to use.

    - Steve

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3: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Samer Abukhait on 06/23/04 11:26 PM
I guess an html_p column is to be added to acs_mail_lite_queue

The sweeper code is to become: 
db_foreach get_queued_messages {} {
            set eh [util_list_to_ns_set $extra_headers]
	    if {$html_p} {  ns_set put $eh Content-Type text/html }
            if {[catch {ns_sendmail $to_addr $from_addr $subject $body $eh $bcc} errmsg]} {
                ns_log Error "ns_sendmail failed: $errmsg"
            } else {
                db_dml delete_queue_entry {}
            }
        }
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4: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Janine Ohmer on 06/24/04 12:05 AM
Look at acs-tcl/tcl/html-email-procs.tcl, which contains the handy proc build_mime_message, and bulk-mail/tcl/bulk-mail-procs.tcl for an example of how to use it.  You will have to make one edit to the first file - someone renamed base64.tcl to base64-procs.tcl but didn't change the reference to it.  I will be committing a fix for that soon, along with some other stuff, but the copy you have will be wrong.
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5: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 06/24/04 01:38 AM
I added a section to the docs on how to do HTML based email from acs-mail-lite. It does require the fix that Janine points out here (which is quite an easy fix).

I'm uncovered a bug in acs-mail-lite's rollout support, however, something I introduced (or at least didn't address when I added in rollout support). ns_sendmail doesn't handle the extra_headers the same, so it bombs out when trying to send MIME email when you have rollout support enabled.

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6: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 06/24/04 01:39 AM
Oh, and thank you all! :)
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8: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 06/24/04 05:26 PM
Thanks to Jeff, the documentation is now online:

https://openacs.org/doc/current/tutorial-html-email.html

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9: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 06/24/04 07:39 PM
Any idea why the HTML in my email gets mangled a bit?

The HTML sent in is as follows:

<a href="https://mydomain.com/intranet/project-manager/task-one?task_id=283046">Unable to remove deadline from task</a> (#283046)

What I get in my email (in Mail.app in Mac OS X, viewing source):

The link is returned as:

x-msg://6/3d%22https://mydomain.com/intranet/project-manager/task-one?task_id=3d283046%22

Any idea what's going on here?

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10: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 9)
Posted by Jeff Davis on 06/24/04 08:10 PM
well =3d is "=" as quoted printable and %22 is " url encoded so it looks like some sort of mishmash of encodings. You should really look at what's really being sent (put some logging stuff in acs-mail-lite or something, and send it to a unix account and see what ends up in the spool file before an MUA gets hold of it).
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11: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 06/25/04 11:13 PM
Thanks for the hint, Jeff.

Looking at this further....

I send an email with the following code: 

    set to_addr myemail@email.com
    set from_addr myemail@email.com
    set subject "Test"
    set message "<a href=\"http://www.safe4all.org\">http://www.safe4all.org</a>"
    set mime_type "text/html"

    # first of all, set up the HTML and text versions of the message

    set message_html [ad_html_text_convert -from $mime_type -to "text/html" -- $body]

    # some mailers chop off the last few characters.
    append message_html "   "

    set message_text [ad_html_text_convert -from $mime_type -to "text/plain" -- $body]

    set message_data [build_mime_message $message_text $message_html]
    
    set extra_headers [ns_set new]
    ns_set put $extra_headers MIME-Version [ns_set get $message_data MIME-Version]
    ns_set put $extra_headers Content-ID   [ns_set get $message_data Content-ID]
    ns_set put $extra_headers Content-Type [ns_set get $message_data Content-Type]
    set message [ns_set get $message_data body]

    foreach to $to_addr {

        acs_mail_lite::send \
            -to_addr  "$to" \
            -from_addr "$from_addr" \
            -subject "$subject" \
            -body "$message" \
            -extraheaders $extra_headers
    }

What I see when I send this to a UNIX mailbox and cat the spool file is:

In the HTML portion of the MIME message: 

MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-ID: <3427.1088195999.2@dev2.bread.com>
Content-Type: text/html;
              charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<a href=3D3d=22http://www.safe4all.org=22>http://www.safe4all.org</a>  =20
This seems to look just fine on Microsoft Outlook, but on Apple's Mail.app program, it appears as: 
x-msg://46/3d'http://www.safe4all.org'
for some reason.

Any idea why it's not working on the Mac?

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12: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Dirk Gomez on 07/29/04 10:03 PM
Jade, did you find a fix for this quoting issue?
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13: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 12)
Posted by Jade Rubick on 07/29/04 10:54 PM
No I never did fix it. Anyone have any ideas?
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14: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 13)
Posted by Jeff Davis on 07/30/04 08:10 AM
I committed a fix for this in html-email-procs. html-email-procs which was in 5.1.1 I think.
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15: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Nima Mazloumi on 08/18/04 02:57 AM
How can I send attachments? Has someone experience on that? Maybe we could add that to the documentation as well.
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16: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 15)
Posted by Brian Fenton on 08/18/04 01:35 PM
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17: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Nima Mazloumi on 08/18/04 03:59 PM
Hi Brian,
I tested the multipart part and it doesn't work. This call breaks:

set body_id [acs_mail_body_new -header_subject $subject -content_item_id $multipart_id ]

Error:

Database operation "0or1row" failed (exception NSDB, "Query was not a statement returning rows.")

ERROR:  Function acs_mail_body__new("unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", timestamptz, "unknown", "unknown", "unknown") does not exist
    Unable to identify a function that satisfies the given argument types
    You may need to add explicit typecasts

SQL:

select acs_mail_body__new (
  NULL,                -- body_id
  NULL,        -- body_reply_to
  NULL,            -- body_from
  NULL,            -- body_date
  NULL,    -- header_message_id
  NULL,        -- header_reply_to
  'Testemail mit acs-mail',      -- header_subject
  NULL,            -- header_from
  NULL,            -- header_to
  '2009',        -- content_item_id
  'acs_mail_body',        -- object_type
  now(),                -- creation_date
  NULL,        -- creation_user
  NULL,            -- creation_ip
  null                    -- context_id
);

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18: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 17)
Posted by Brian Fenton on 08/18/04 04:18 PM
Nima, here's some code I used recently to send an attachment. Let me know how you get on. Brian 
set generated_name "test"
set csv_string "contents of csv file"
set csv_file_name "outputfilename.csv"

set file_handle [open $csv_file_name w]
puts $file_handle $csv_string
close $file_handle

set ip_addr [ad_conn peeraddr]
set modifying_user [ad_conn user_id]

set from_addr [db_string some_sql "select email from parties where party_id = :modifying_user"]

# create the multipart message ('multipart/mixed')
set multipart_id [acs_mail_multipart_new -multipart_kind "mixed"]

# create an acs_mail_body (with content_item_id = multipart_id )
set body_id [acs_mail_body_new -header_subject $generated_name -content_item_id $multipart_id ]

# create a new text/plain item
set content_item_id [db_exec_plsql create_text_item {
    begin
        :1 := content_item.new (
               name      => :generated_name, 
               title => :generated_name,
               mime_type => 'text/plain',
               text => :csv_string);
    end;}]    

set sequence_num [acs_mail_multipart_add_content -multipart_id $multipart_id -content_item_id $content_item_id]

db_dml update_multiparts "
      update acs_mail_multipart_parts 
      set mime_disposition='attachment; filename=\"$generated_name\"' 
      where sequence_number=:sequence_num 
      and multipart_id=:multipart_id"

# queue it
set mail_link_id [db_exec_plsql queue_the_mail {
    begin

        :1 := acs_mail_queue_message.new (
                  null,             -- p_mail_link_id
                  :body_id,         -- p_body_id
                  null,             -- p_context_id
                  sysdate,          -- p_creation_date
                  :modifying_user,  -- p_creation_user
                  :ip_addr,         -- p_creation_ip
                  'acs_mail_link'   -- p_object_type
                  );
    end;
    }
    ]      

# send a copy of the mail to the logged in user
set sql_string "
    insert into acs_mail_queue_outgoing
     ( message_id, envelope_from, envelope_to )
    values
     ( :mail_link_id, :from_addr, :to_addr )"

set to_addr $from_addr
if {![empty_string_p $to_addr]} {
  db_dml outgoing_queue $sql_string
} else {
  ns_log Error "To email address  is blank"
}
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19: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 1)
Posted by Nima Mazloumi on 08/18/04 04:26 PM
set multipart_id [acs_mail_multipart_new -multipart_kind "mixed"]
set body_id [acs_mail_body_new -header_subject "test" -content_item_id $multipart_id ]

Already breaks on oacs-5-1. postgres installation:

ERROR:  Function acs_mail_body__new("unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", "unknown", timestamptz, "unknown", "unknown", "unknown") does not exist
    Unable to identify a function that satisfies the given argument types
    You may need to add explicit typecasts

SQL:

select acs_mail_body__new (
  NULL,                -- body_id
  NULL,        -- body_reply_to
  NULL,            -- body_from
  NULL,            -- body_date
  NULL,    -- header_message_id
  NULL,        -- header_reply_to
  'test',      -- header_subject
  NULL,            -- header_from
  NULL,            -- header_to
  '2015',        -- content_item_id
  'acs_mail_body',        -- object_type
  now(),                -- creation_date
  NULL,        -- creation_user
  NULL,            -- creation_ip
  null                    -- context_id
);

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20: Re: How do I send HTML email? (response to 19)
Posted by Brian Fenton on 08/18/04 04:37 PM
Ahh! Postgres! I don't use Postgres, only Oracle. Sorry about that. 😟