How can I send email with attachment xls file using shell script as application/xls mimetype without making the received file becoming unreadable

Question

#!/bin/bash

ATTACH1=file.xls<br>
SUBJECT="subj"<br>
FROM=[e-mail]<br>
TO=[e-mail]<br>
CC=[e-mail]<br>
MIME="Application/vnd.ms-excel" <br>
FILE=$ATTACH1<br>
boundary="---my-unlikely-text-for-mime-boundary---$$--" <br>
(cat <<!<br>
From: $FROM<br>
To: $TO<br>
Subject: $SUBJECT<br>
Date: $(date +"%a, %b %e %Y %T %z")<br>
Mime-Version: 1.0<br>
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="$boundary"<br>


This email has attached the file<br>
--$boundary<br>
Content-Type: $MIME;name="$FILE"<br>
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="$FILE"<br>

!<br>
uuencode ${ATTACH1} ${ATTACH1}<br>
) | sendmail -v ${TO}<br>

Hi,

The above code can send xls file using shell script. But the problem is that, the received file cant be open. Also, the file size of the xls becomes smaller. Example: original xls attachment size is 17kb before sending, but the received file becomes 378b in size after it was sent..

What can I do to make the xls that was received becomes readable when open by the receiver? What is wrong or missing in the above script? Please help!!!!

And by the way.. I CANNOT USE MUTT

Answer 1

You need to specify the Content-Transfer-Encoding for the MIME part with the attachment. I don't know if uuencode is a standard one. Base64 is though.

You also need to send the closing boundary marker.

Your redirection into cat is wrong.

(cat << !
From: $FROM
To: $TO
Subject: $SUBJECT
Date: $(date +"%a, %b %e %Y %T %z")
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="$boundary"

This email has attached the file

--$boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Please see the attachmed file.

--$boundary
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: $MIME;name="$ATTACH1"
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="$ATTACH1"

$(base64 "$ATTACH1")

--$boundary--
!
) | sendmail -v "$TO"

Answer 2

Instead of building your own program to send mail, just use one of the many that already exist. What you are looking for is a mail user agent (MUA). There are many to choose from to send mail on the commandline. For example, using Mutt:

mutt [e-mail] -s "My example subject" -a attachment.xlsx < mailbody.txt

This will send a mail to [e-mail], reading the mail body text from the file "mailbody.txt", and with the attachment attachment.xlsx. Mutt will do all the nitty-gritty for ýou, such as encoding the mail body appropriately and choosing the right MIME type for the attachment.

Of course you can write all that yourself, but you may have to invest a few months...