pmail 1.14

Description:

pmail 1.14

Introduction
pmail is used to quickly send e-mail messages from command line.
Git repository: https://bitbucket.org/tomaszwaraksa/pmail

Sending e-mails from command-line? Easy!
Surely there are plenty of tools for that, to begin with mail and ssmtp
on *x systems. Unfortunately, they’re not for the weak of heart.
Just look here for the available options:
https://tecadmin.net/ways-to-send-email-from-linux-command-line/
Yeah…
That’s a lot of typing for something simple. Admittedly, all those
cat and < dev null are clever hacks, but honestly, they are also
an utter waste of time and long-term memory. And, because of complexity,
they often result in failure and frustration. Eventually, after a brief
love story, you would stop using command line for sending e-mails. And
it would be a terrible loss for humanity, given how much time is wasted
watching Thunderbird e-mail client load.
So, is there a better way?
Lo and behold, I give you pmail. A nifty command-line e-mail sender,
written in Python.


pmail is simple
With pmail sending an e-mail from command line is a breeze:
pmail [email protected] Hi! "Wasup?\n\nJohn"
Reminder mail to yourself? Easy:
pmail me "Shopping list" "Cat food\nWater\nBread\nCookies"
And it can be even simpler. If you want, you can send a message in
interactive mode. Just type:
pmail
and the application will ask you to enter the recipient, subject and
message body:
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: New design
Body: Please find attached some ideas for Gmail.\n\nCheers,\n\nBob
Attachments: ~/docs/gmail-commandline.pdf
No need of course to enter From: or To: prefixes. Our
super-intelligent cloud-connected AI will figure this out for you. And,
after years of tedious training our deep learning algos are now able to
figure out that an empty line has to be transmitted between message
subject and body! Oh my goodness!


Prerequisities
To run pmail you need Python 3 interpreter on your computer. At
minimum, Python version 3.5 is required. You can verify whether it’s
available using the following commands:
python --version
pip --version
If you happen to have both Python 2.* and Python 3.* on your machine,
in all examples below you will rather use python3 and pip3
commands, so that the right Python version is used.



Installation

Installation from Python Package Index
The simplest way to is to install the application from PyPI
repository, using the following command:
pip install pmail
On *ux system you need to run it with administrative privileges, to
have pmail command globally available:
sudo pip install pmail
If it doesn’t work, it probably means you need to install Python 3 on
your computer. Check https://www.python.org/downloads/ to find out how
to install Python on your platform.


Manual installation

Unzip the sources or clone the repository
https://bitbucket.org/tomaszwaraksa/pmail.git
Navigate to the folder with the sources
Run pip install -e .
If you’ll ever update the sources, just re-run the same command again
Enjoy!




Configuration
Before you can send your first e-mail, you need to provide some
information about the SMTP server through which pmail will send your
messages to the world. Just type:
pmail --configure
The application will guide you through configuration steps, asking for:
SMTP host:
SMTP port:
Login:
Password:
Security:
Sender name:
Sender address:
You have to consult your e-mail provider for these values. Few tips:

No need to prefix the SMTP host with anything, just the pure domain
name, for example smtp.godaddy.com
Login and Sender address are usually the same, just your
e-mail address
Security can be set to ssl, tls or none. Please,
please, use tls whenever your e-mail provider supports it, which
seems to be the norm these days.

Once you’re done entering configuration, pmail attempts to send a
test message to verify whether the settings are correct. If the message
has arrived into your mailbox, everything is fine and you can start
using pmail!
If at any moment in future you’d like to change configuration, use the
same command to change it.

Configuration is stored in ~/.pmail/configuration.json file, so
you can edit it manually. The exception is login and password, which
are stored as encrypted. To change these, you need to run
pmail --configure like described above.



Sending e-mails

Sending e-mails in interactive mode
To send an e-mail, simply type:
`pmail`
The application will ask you to enter e-mail recipient, subject, body
and eventual attachments. Just press ENTER to confirm each entry. Once
you’ve entered the body, e-mail message will be sent and confirmation
message displayed. If anything goes wrong, you will see the error
message.

If you’ve forgotten to configure pmail as described above, no
worries. The application will first guide you through configuration,
then it will continue with sending the message.



Sending e-mails super-fast
Once you’re used to pmail, you’ll probably use the super-fast full
command-line mode. You can enter message recipient(s), subject and
eventual attachments as command parameters, in this exact sequence:
pmail recipients subject body attachments
The same rules apply here as with interactive mode:

Multiple recipients are separated with ;
To send e-mail to yourself, enter me or self. No this,
because this sucks, just see it for yourself
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Operators/this
\n can be used to add linebreak to message body
Message body is optional, press ENTER to send an empty message
Attachments are optional, press ENTER to send a message without
attachments
Multiple attachments are separated with ;



Partial arguments
You can provide only some of the input arguments, for example just the
recipient or recipient and subject. In this case the application will
ask you only about the remaining arguments. For example:
pmail me
will assume your e-mail address as recipient of the message, and ask you
about the message subject and body.


Recommendations

wrap your parameters in quotation marks "" if they contain
spaces. In interactive mode this is not required.
If using multiple addresses or multiple attachments, wrap the whole
list in quotation marks "". Again, in interactive mode this is
not required.

Some examples:
pmail [email protected] Hi Sup?
pmail [email protected] "Hi, how are you?" "Haven't heard from you in a while\n\nBob"
pmail "[email protected];[email protected]" Invitation "Hi, come over for a pint tomorrow!"
pmail [email protected] "Do not open" "This is a dangerous attachment." ~/Docs/Memo.pdf
pmail [email protected] "3 files" "Attached the three documents" "1.pdf;2.pdf;3.pdf"



Advanced features

Multiple recipients
To send a message to multiple recipients, enter multiple e-mail
addresses separated by semicolon ; like shown below. When in
command-line mode, wrap the addresses in quotation marks ""
To: [email protected];[email protected];[email protected]

pmail "[email protected];[email protected];[email protected]" "Hello !" "Greetings from Bob"


Spaces and linebreaks
Use \n to indicate linebreaks in message body. When in command-line
mode, wrap text containing spaces in quotation marks ""
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hi John!
Body: Hello, what's the story?\n\ncheers,\n\nSeamus\nVery Big Corporation Inc.

pmail [email protected] "Hi John!" "Hello, what's the story?\n\ncheers,\n\nSeamus\nVery Big Corporation Inc."
will result in message body looking like this:
Hello, what's the story?

cheers,

Seamus
Very Big Corporation Inc.


Attachments
If you want to send any attachment, add -f parameter. In interactive
mode you’ll be then asked to provide files to attach to the message, for
example:
To: [email protected]
Subject: Hi John!
Body: Attached the memo you've requested, cheers!
Attachments: ~/docs/memo.txt
In command-line mode simply specify the file path after body
parameter:
pmail [email protected] "Hi John!" "Attached the memo you've requested, cheers!" "~/docs/memo.txt"
The following rules apply:

If the file is in another directory than the current one, specify
file path
You can use relative file paths, for example ../docs/file.txt or
subfolder of the current folder docs/file.txt
Use ~ character to indicate your home folder. Our
super-intelligent AI engine supports ~ even on Windows
If you wish to send multiple files, separate them with semicolon
; and in command line mode don’t forget to wrap the whole
parameter in double quotes """




Address book
To further boost your productivity, pmail allows defining aliases
for frequently used e-mail addresses. Rather than typing:
pmail [email protected] Hi "Mayday, mayday, we're sinking!"
you’d rather wish to do:
pmail ceo Hi "Mayday, mayday, we're sinking!"
Two aliases are predefined and you can use them right away, to send
e-mails to yourself. Just type me or self, and e-mail address
which you’ve entered in configuration as yours, will be used as
recipient.
To create your contact book, run p-mail with --contacts flag:
pmail --contacts
This will list all the existing contacts and ask you to either add new
contacts or to delete the existing ones. Then follow the instructions on
the screen to fill up your address book.
Once done, you can use contact names whenever sending e-mails, both in
interactive mode as in power mode. You can freely mix contact names and
e-mail addresses, for example:
To: ceo;hr;[email protected]
Subject: Hi
Body: Everything all right?
or in command-line mode:
pmail "ceo;hr;[email protected]" Hi "Everything all right?"

Contacts are stored in ~/.pmail/configuration.json file. You can
easily edit them manually using your preferred text editor which I
bet is nano.



Other options
A few other options are available when running pmail:
--test Sends test message, the same as when editing configuration
--version Displays version number and copyright information
--help Displays quick help and syntax
--silent If present when sending email in power mode, no output is sent to console


MIT License
Copyright 2017, Dublin, Tomasz Waraksa
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a
copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
“Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included
in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY
CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT,
TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE
SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.