Sendmail

This is a small automation console script. It is written to automate small mailing list from generated CSV file.

Note: it was tested only on Linux. To launch it on Windows, at least you will need to change input redirect commands.

###Usage

• configure email server
• prepare input data
• write a template
• test rendering
• send emails

Configure email server

Open settings.py. Set smtp_server, use_tls, use_ssl, username and password. If you have ready template, you can adjust template_path or template as well.

###Prepare input data

Script accepts CSV content from standard input. First line of CSV is treated as column names. Column email should present and will be used a recipient address. Other columns will be used for template rendering. Example of CSV content:

name,date,balance,email
John Doe,12/31/2015,0.23,johndoe@email.com
...

Note: This script works with CSV files, which means comma separated values. MS Office uses semicolon (;) separator by default. If you use MSO, change separator to comma when saving the CSV.

###Write a template

File template.txt contains email body template. Put variables corresponding to your CSV columns in curly braces. Example of template for rendering the CSV above:

Dear {name},

We would like to inform you that as of {date} your account 
balance is {balance}.

Sincerely,
your support team X.

###Test rendering

To do a dry run, run without -y key:

./sendmail.py "Put email subject here" < test.csv

You will get something like:

Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Put email subject here
from: 
To: johndoe@email.com

Dear John Doe,

We would like to inform you that as of 12/31/2015 your account
balance is $0.23.

Sincerely,
your support team X.

================================================================================
This is an example of emails that would be sent.
If you want to really send them, add -y to the command.
================================================================================

Note: As you might have a long list of recipients, it makes sense to test output on a small subset of them. You can also use pass result to more, less, head or tail:

./sendmail.py "Put email subject here" < test.csv | tail

###Send emails

Finally, when you have everything in place, add -y to the command: Example usage:

./sendmail.py -y "Put email subject here" < test.csv

###License

Licensed under MIT license