Sophisticated HTML and MIME email generation for Matlab.
MailSpoon is a Matlab library for generating advanced emails using HTML and MIME capabilities. It supports HTML email, inline images, file attachments, Cc and Bcc addresses, SMTP server configuration, and more. It is suitable for server-side automation of email generation.
MailSpoon can be used to produce nice reports, error notifications, or whatever else you want to use fancy emails for.
MailSpoon is written in a modern Matlab style. It's my goal to make MailSpoon an example of how nice Matlab libraries can be organized.
- Matlab R2019b or newer
To install MailSpoon:
- Download the MailSpoon repo.
- Add its
Mcodedirectory to your Matlab path usingaddpath().
The main interface for building and sending email is mailspoon.HtmlEmail. You create an email object, add text and attachments, and then send it.
e = mailspoon.HtmlEmail;
e.from = 'Alice Foo <[email protected]>';
e.to = ["[email protected]", "Carol Bar <[email protected]>"];
e.subject = 'Hello, World!';
% Set HTML using setHtmlMsg()
e.html = strjoin({
'<html><body>'
'<h1>Hello, World!</h1>'
''
'<p>This is a message sent from '
' <a href="http://github.com/janklab/MailSpoon"><b>MailSpoon</b></a> '
'for MATLAB®.</p>'
''
'</html></body>'
}, '\n');
% Attach files using attach()
e.attach([mfilename('fullpath') '.m'])
% Now send it!
e.sendTo incorporate inline images into your HTML message, you need to "embed" them into the message first in order to get "cid" identifiers for them, and then stick those cids into your HTML inside <img> tags.
e = mailspoon.HtmlEmail('[email protected]', 'Me <[email protected]>');
e.subject = 'Look at these inline images from MailSpoon!';
% Embed images first, to get their cids
fig = figure('Visible','off');
surf(peaks);
fig_cid = e.embed(fig);
close(fig);
file = fullfile(mailspoon.libinfo.distroot, 'scratch', 'Brooklyn.jpg');
file_cid = e.embed(file);
% Then create your HTML using those cids
e.html = sprintf(strjoin({
'<html>'
'<body>'
'<h1>Hello, World!</h1>'
''
'<h2>A Matlab Figure</h2>'
'<img src=cid:%s>' % Do not put a "/" in the img tag!
''
'<h2>An Image File</h2>'
'<img src=cid:%s>'
''
'<p>This is a message sent from '
'<a href="http://github.com/janklab/MailSpoon"><b>MailSpoon</b></a> '
'for MATLAB®.</p>'
''
'</html>'
'</body>'
}, '\n'), fig_cid, file_cid);
e.sendMailSpoon includes functions for rendering data (such as Matlab table arrays) as HTML, for inclusion in your email. The main interface for that is the mailspoon.htmlify function.
tbl = array2table(magic(5));
htmlFragment = mailspoon.htmlify(tbl);
html = sprintf(strjoin({
'<html><body>'
'<h1>Here is a table</h1>'
' %s'
'</body></html>'
}, '\n'), htmlFragment);If all goes well, you'll soon be sending emails that look like this!
Email server configuration is done through the mailspoon.MailHost interface. Grab the default SMTP server configuration from mailspoon.MailHost.default and set its properties.
host = mailspoon.MailHost.default;
host.username = 'my_smtp_username';
host.password = 'my_password';
% If your mail host requires SSL
host.useSsl = true;
host.sslPort = 9999; % If they don't use the default port 465For settings that you don't configure in mailspoon.MailHost, MailSpoon will fall back to the defaults found in Matlab's Internet prefs, Java system properties, and maybe other places if I can find a reasonable way to look them up.
Configuring mailspoon.MailHost.default is local to the Matlab session, and does not cause the Matlab preferences file to be updated, the way setpref('Internet') does. This makes it suitable for use in automated processes on the server side.
If you want to see debugging dumps of the internals of the objects, call inspect() on them.
e.inspectSee the full docs live on the MailSpoon website, or in the docs/ directory of the distribution.
MailSpoon is built on top of Apache Commons Email and JavaMail/javax.mail.
MailSpoon was written by Andrew Janke.
The project home page is the GitHub repo page. Bug reports and feature requests are welcome.
MailSpoon is part of the Janklab suite of libraries for Matlab.
MailSpoon's basic functionality is based on this post from Yair Altman at Undocumented Matlab.