Mail attachment shows blank but I know it's got content

marksa · Sep 23, 2003

I've got a mail script that tries to attach a text file to the mail. If I read the resultant mail in an html based mail reader it all seems ok. When I view it in Outlook there is an attachment of the correct size but the file
is empty.

The attach part of the script is

print MAIL<<EndOfAtt ;

--NextPart_000_000D_01C002C4.95399B80
Content-Type: text/plain;
name="$file"
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="$file"

EndOfAtt

Do I need some other parameters?

Thanks

ZaSter · Sep 23, 2003

Might work if you append ".txt" to the name of the attached file.

marksa · Sep 23, 2003

I tried that but same problem. The odd thing is that when I first open the attachment I can see the content for a millisecond - there must be something wrong with the header of the text file I guess.

Annihilannic · Sep 24, 2003

What application are you opening the text file in? Notepad?

A text file doesn't have a header, so that shouldn't be it.

Have you tried converting the file to DOS format using unix2dos before sending it?

Annihilannic.

marksa · Sep 24, 2003

I've tried Notepad, Textpad and Dreamweaver

ZaSter · Sep 24, 2003

A web browser can read the file because that is the type of formatting you are doing.

Outlook may do better with the file if you append a ".html" to the file name.

Alternatively, when I send files from UNIX machines, I use uuencode:

uuencode /tmp/logfile logfile.txt | mailx -s "log file" fake@fake.com

I think I've seen this done in Perl before, i.e., redirecting to the MAIL file handle.

marksa · Sep 24, 2003

Do you mean save the attachment to the server as a .html? I've tried that and as a .txt.

Or do you mean just changing the script. Here's a cut down version of the script that I'm using for debugging

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
##############################################################
# SUCCESS.PL

$mailprog = '/usr/lib/sendmail';
$VSOemail = "orders\@mydomain.com";
$printerEmail = "orders\@mydomain.com

&sendVSOemail;

&writePage;

##############################################################
# Send Email to VSO

sub sendVSOemail {
$recipient = $VSOemail;
$mySubject = "Online Order Notification";

open (MAIL, "|$mailprog $recipient&quot

|| die "Can't open $mailprog!\n";

print MAIL <<EndOfFail ;
From: orders\@theclient.com
To: $recipient
Subject: $mySubject
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="NextPart_000_000D_01C002C4.95399B80"
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--NextPart_000_000D_01C002C4.95399B80
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Plain text

--NextPart_000_000D_01C002C4.95399B80
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<hr size="1" width="420" align="left" noshade>
myTitle
<hr size="1" width="420" align="left" noshade>
This is the HTML part
EndOfFail
print MAIL "</body></html>\n";

$file = 'cards/11111181.txt';

# does the next bit since the full script has just created this file and it needs permission
chomp($file);
chmod(0777, $file);

print MAIL<<EndOfAtt ;

--NextPart_000_000D_01C002C4.95399B80
Content-Type: text/plain; name="$file"
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="$file"

EndOfAtt

open(FILE, $file) or die;
while( <FILE>) { print MAIL; };
close(FILE);

print MAIL "--NextPart_000_000D_01C002C4.95399B80--";

close (MAIL);
}

##########################################################################################
#
# Output HTML
#
sub writePage
{

print <<EndOfFail ;
Content-type: text/html

<html>
<head>
<title>Finished Page</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

</head>
<body>
finished
</body>
</html>

EndOfFail

exit;
}
#####################################

Thanks to all of you that have invested your mental energy in this one.

ZaSter · Sep 25, 2003

I think the problem is that you are telling Outlook to expect a file, but what you are actually giving it is the text from the file. In expecting a file, Outlook is looking for some form of file encoding which it does not find since you only send the text you're reading from the file.

The Perl forum may be a better place to have this question answered.

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Mail attachment shows blank but I know it's got content

marksa

Technical User

ZaSter

Technical User

marksa

Technical User

Annihilannic

MIS

marksa

Technical User

ZaSter

Technical User

marksa

Technical User

ZaSter

Technical User

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