Send e-mails by batch

Batch generated e-mail messages were mentioned before in my Solutions found in alt.msdos.batch page.

The January 2000 issue of Blaise, the Dutch HCC Pascal User Group's magazine, contained an article about sending e-mail with Delphi. The article contained more information on the command strings used to send e-mail.

The general format is:

mailto:to?subject=subject&cc=cc_address&bcc=bcc_address&body=message_body

To use this type of command in batch files we need to:

• precede the string with the START command
• replace every single percent sign ( % ) by double percent signs ( %% )
• "escape" ampersands ( & ) with carets ( ˆ )
• limit the length of the mailto string to the maximum allowable command line length minus 6 (leaving a maximum of 121 characters for MS-DOS, or 249 characters for Windows NT 4/Windows 2000, or 2035 for Windows XP)

Examples:

START mailto:dummy@nuldevice.com?subject=Test%%20messageˆ&cc=info@nuldevice.comˆ&body=Hi,%%0D%%0A%%0D%%0AThis%%20is%%20an%%20automatically%%20created%%20message.%%0D%%0A%%0D%%0ABye

This command will create a message to dummy@nuldevice.com, with a carbon copy to info@nuldevice.com, with the words "Test message" in the subject field.
The message itself will consist of the following text:

Hi,

This is an automatically created  message.

Bye

The following NT only batch file will check if the correct network drive mappings have been made.
If not, an e-mail message to the helpdesk is generated (assuming the e-mail software is available without the mappings). The user can add more information before actually sending it.

@ECHO OFF
SET ERRORS=0
:: Use your own mappings and search strings here
NET USE P: | FIND /I "%username%" >NUL 2>NUL
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 CALL :ErrorMsg P:
NET USE S: | FIND /I "system" >NUL 2>NUL
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 CALL :ErrorMsg S:
:: Create an e-mail message if any errors were detected
IF %ERRORS% GEQ 1 CALL :Mail
:: Clear variables used in this batch file
FOR %%A IN (BODY DATE ERRORS LINE MESSAGE TIME) DO SET %%A=
GOTO :EOF

:ErrorMsg
SET /A ERRORS = %ERRORS% + 1
NET USE %1 >NUL 2>NUL
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 (
	SET BODY=%BODY%%%0D%%0ADrive%%20%1%%20not%%20mapped
	GOTO :EOF
)
FOR /F "TOKENS=3* DELIMS= " %%A IN ('NET USE %1 ˆ| FIND "Local name"') DO SET MESSAGE=Drive%%20%%A%%20mapped%%20to%%20
:: Replacement of backslashes "\" by "%%5C"
:: prevents interpretation of "\n" as CR/LF
FOR /F "TOKENS=3,4* DELIMS=\ " %%A IN ('NET USE %1 ˆ| FIND "Remote name"') DO SET MESSAGE=%MESSAGE%%%5C%%5C%%A%%5C%%B
SET BODY=%BODY%%%0D%%0A%MESSAGE%
GOTO :EOF

:Mail
FOR /F "TOKENS=2*" %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET DATE=%%A
FOR /F %%A IN ('TIME/T') DO SET TIME=%%A
START mailto:helpdesk@ourdomain.com?subject=Drive%%20mapping%%20errorˆ&body=At%%20%DATE%,%%20%TIME%,%%20user%%20%USERNAME%%%20encountered%%20the%%20following%%20drive%%20mapping%%20error(s)%%20on%%20%COMPUTERNAME%:%%0D%%0A%BODY%
GOTO :EOF

As the resulting message content already indicates, using this batch file you will probably run into command length limitations real soon:

At 15/01/2000, 13:43, user ROB encountered the following drive mapping error(s) on SERVER:

Drive P: not mapped
Drive S: mapped to \\SE

Limiting the length of the first line may help a little, but the limit will be about two or maybe three error messages.

Assuming your log files aren't too big, you could use the following NT only batch procedure to create a message to the system administrator, containing the (ASCII) log file:

@ECHO OFF
FOR /F "TOKENS=*" %%A IN (LOGFILE.LOG) DO CALL :AddLine %%A
:: The ":~6" in "%BODY:~6%" removes the "%0D%0A" at the start of the body
START mailto:sysadm@ourdomain.com?subject=Log%%20fileˆ&body=%BODY:~6%
GOTO :EOF

:AddLine
SET LINE=
FOR %%Z IN (%*) DO CALL :AddWord %%Z
:: The ":~3" in "%LINE:~3%" removes the "%20" at the start of the line
SET BODY=%BODY%%%0D%%0A%LINE:~3%
GOTO :EOF

:AddWord
SET LINE=%LINE%%%20%1
GOTO :EOF

Third party tools

I wouldn't go as far as saying that if it isn't mentioned here it isn't possible.
However, I often get questions about how to add attachments, or how to read the message body from a file.
Please believe me, if it were possible in "pure" batch (and if I were aware of that) I would have mentioned it here!

So this is where the third party tools come into view.

Scribe is a small footprint e-mail program (fits on a floppy disk) that can be used as an "ordinary" mail program, plus it can be used to send mail from the command line.

Command line e-mail programs:

If you use an Exchange mail server, consider using MAPISEND from the Exchange Resource Kit for command line mailing.

Mozilla Thunderbird users can compose messages on the command line, similar to the "mailto:" technique described above, but including attachments, using its -compose switch.

WSH based e-mail:

Use CDOSYS to send e-mails in VBScript or HTAs.

GUI to dynamically generate unattended e-mail:

Use Fileaze to create tasks that include anything from capturing web pages to sending files per e-mail, and from compressing to encrypting, plus anything that can be run from a "normal" command line.

New features in HTML5

Besides sending e-mails, HTML5 allows you to send SMS (text messages) and initiate phone calls.

Phone call:

<a href="tel:0123456789">Give us a call!</a>

SMS:

<a href="sms:0123456789?body=This is my text message">Send us a text message!</a>