Skip to contents

Send email

Source: R/email.R
send_mail.Rd

Use the curl SMTP client to send an email. The message argument must be properly formatted RFC2822 email message with From/To/Subject headers and CRLF line breaks.

Usage

send_mail(
  mail_from,
  mail_rcpt,
  message,
  smtp_server = "smtp://localhost",
  use_ssl = c("try", "no", "force"),
  verbose = TRUE,
  ...
)

Arguments

mail_from

email address of the sender.

mail_rcpt

one or more recipient email addresses. Do not include names, these go into the message headers.

message

either a string or connection with (properly formatted) email message, including sender/recipient/subject headers. See example.

smtp_server

hostname or address of the SMTP server, or, an smtp:// or smtps:// URL. See "Specifying the server, port, and protocol" below.

use_ssl

Request to upgrade the connection to SSL using the STARTTLS command, see CURLOPT_USE_SSL for details. Default will try to SSL, proceed as normal otherwise.

verbose

print output

...

other options passed to handle_setopt(). In most cases you will need to set a username and password or login_options to authenticate with the SMTP server, see details.

Specifying the server, port, and protocol

The smtp_server argument takes a hostname, or an SMTP URL:

  • mail.example.com - hostname only

  • mail.example.com:587 - hostname and port

  • smtp://mail.example.com - protocol and hostname

  • smtp://mail.example.com:587 - full SMTP URL

  • smtps://mail.example.com:465 - full SMTPS URL

By default, the port will be 25, unless smtps:// is specified–then the default will be 465 instead.

For internet SMTP servers you probably need to pass a username and passwords option. For some servers you also need to pass a string with login_options for example login_options="AUTH=NTLM".

Encrypting connections via SMTPS or STARTTLS

There are two different ways in which SMTP can be encrypted: SMTPS servers run on a port which only accepts encrypted connections, similar to HTTPS. Alternatively, a regular insecure smtp connection can be "upgraded" to a secure TLS connection using the STARTTLS command. It is important to know which method your server expects.

If your smtp server listens on port 465, then use a smtps://hostname:465 URL. The SMTPS protocol guarantees that TLS will be used to protect all communications from the start.

If your email server listens on port 25 or 587, use an smtp:// URL in combination with the use_ssl parameter to control if the connection should be upgraded with STARTTLS. The default value "try" will opportunistically try to upgrade to a secure connection if the server supports it, and proceed as normal otherwise.

Examples

if (FALSE) # Set sender and recipients (email addresses only)
recipients <- readline("Enter your email address to receive test: ")
sender <- '[email protected]'

# Full email message in RFC2822 format
message <- 'From: "R (curl package)" <[email protected]>
To: "Roger Recipient" <[email protected]>
Subject: Hello R user!

Dear R user,

I am sending this email using curl.'

# Send the email
send_mail(sender, recipients, message, smtp_server = 'smtps://smtp.gmail.com',
  username = 'curlpackage', password  = 'qyyjddvphjsrbnlm') # \dontrun{}
#> Error: object 'recipients' not found