How do I send html email from Perl?

January 29, 2006November 29, 2007in Apache, Debian / Ubuntu, EMail Servers, Perl, RedHat and Friends, Solaris-Unix, Ubuntu Linux, UNIX, Windows last updated November 29, 2007

Q. How Can I send html email from cgi perl program under UNIX / Linux and Apache web sever?

A. Sending HTML email is an easy task with MIME::Lite CPAN module. It is a low-calorie MIME generator.

It can be use to send html emails, graphics file email attachments as a single-part or multi-part message. Here is simple perl script that sends html email.

Install Perl MIME::Lite

If you do not have MIME::Lite module, install using following command (login as a root user):

# cpan -i MIME::Lite

Perl script code

Script to send html email from perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use MIME::Lite;

# SendTo email id
my $email = [email protected]';

# create a new MIME Lite based email
my $msg = MIME::Lite->new
(
Subject => "HTML email test",
From    => [email protected]',
To      => $email,
Type    => 'text/html',
Data    => '<H1>Hello</H1><br>This is a test email.
Please visit our site <a href="http://cyberciti.biz/">online</a><hr>'
);

$msg->send();

Save the script and execute it. Here is an email (sample) send by above script:

Read man page of MIME::Lite for more information:

perldoc MIME::Lite

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. He has worked with global clients and in various industries, including IT, education, defense and space research, and the nonprofit sector. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+.

7 comment

Frank Wiles says:
June 12, 2007 at 8:33 pm
If you’re interested in sending HTML emails from Perl you might want to check out an article I wrote on MIME::Lite::TT and MIME::Lite::TT::HTML for sending Emails.
By using the MIME::Lite::TT and/or MIME::Lite:TT::HTML modules you can take advantage of both the features of MIME::Lite, but also add in the ability to use Template Toolkit templates for your text/plain and text/html parts.
Hope it helps!
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Theunis says:
May 24, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Thanks Frank. Great tuturial.
Reply Report comment
Mike says:
August 17, 2009 at 5:24 am
Hi , I have a problem when I send a long string used Data=>$content, $content included \r\n , It can not sent all the content of $content . could you please tell me what the problem is ?
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vankinh says:
January 29, 2010 at 3:01 pm
test sendmail in linux.
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Srini says:
May 29, 2011 at 7:15 pm
This helps me a lot and I am really thankfull
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sanuda says:
March 23, 2012 at 1:12 am
Really helpful for me as a Perl Developer . Thanks a lot for your article
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Hi,
I’ve got this error message:
SMTP Failed to connect to mail server: A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.
at C:/EclipseWorkspaces/csse120/Perl_testy/Tk_hello_world.pl line 29

Here is code:

use MIME::Lite;

$user = [email protected]';
$pass = 'xxxxxxxxxx';
print "$user\n";
print "$pass\n";
MIME::Lite->send('smtp', 'smtp.gmail.com', 
	AuthUser=>$user, AuthPass=>$pass, Timeout=>10);
# AuthUser=>$user, AuthPass=>$pass);


my $MailFrom = [email protected]';
my $to_list  = [email protected]';
my $cc_list  = [email protected]';
my $subject  = "hello test";
my $message  = "This email was generated automatically.";

my $msg = MIME::Lite->new(
    From     => $MailFrom,
    To       => $to_list,
    Cc       => $cc_list,
    Subject  => $subject,
    Type     => 'TEXT',
    Encoding => '7bit',
    Data     => $message,
);
print "I\'m sending message\.\.\.\n";
print $msg;
$msg->send();

Could you help me please?

Jan

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