This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org: --- Title : Send email with multiple inline images via bash with a loop Author : Remy van Elst Date : 23-07-2018 URL : https://raymii.org/s/snippets/Send_email_with_multiple_inline_images_via_bash.html Format : Markdown/HTML --- Recently I had a request from a user that whished to receive a scheduled email with two screenshots. The screenshots were automated via AutoIt on a network share, the user manually logged in every evening to check the pictures. With bash and postfix/sendmail we can automate this process, the user now doesn't have to login but can just check their email. There are a lot of snippets and guides to attach emails via the shell, but displaying multiple images inline as an HTML mail was something I had to figure out. You cannot embed the image in base64 HTML because Outlook doesn't show that, you must use the Content-ID style embed. Like UUENCODE, but more complicated. (The next step in this process with the user is to automate the reason why they have to check those screenshots every night, that is something for another article)

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![][2] The script first fetches the images from a remote URL and places them on the filesystem, in a date-structured folder for archival purposes. It then constructs the HTML email, appending the attachments as base64 encoded content below the text part of the email. ### Script #!/bin/bash # date with hour and minute for in filename CURDATE=$(date +%Y%m%dT%H%M) # date for folder name FOLDERDATE=$(date +%Y%m%d) # path where files are stored for archival SAVEPATH=/opt/monitoring/screenshots/$FOLDERDATE mkdir -p $SAVEPATH # declare the array with the images to mail, can be as many as you want. declare -A ATTS #filename without extension. Key = header, value is filename without ext ATTS["Screenshot 1, Most important"]="image1" ATTS["Screenshot 2, Some more info"]="image2" # extension must all be the same EXT=".png" # loop over all images and download them locally $(for key in "${!ATTS[@]}"; do value=${ATTS[$key]}; /usr/bin/wget -q -O $SAVEPATH/$value-$CURDATE$EXT https://[...]/$value$EXT; cp $SAVEPATH/$value-$CURDATE$EXT $SAVEPATH/$value$EXT; done) for key in "${!ATTS[@]}"; do # due to formatting of the base64 output in the command loop # the file must be base64 encoded in a variable. # here we encode the file, in the loop we get in it a var. value=${ATTS[$key]}; /usr/bin/base64 "$SAVEPATH/$value$EXT" > $SAVEPATH/$value$EXT.base64; done /usr/sbin/sendmail -t < $(for key in "${!ATTS[@]}"; do value=${ATTS[$key]}; echo "

$key

"; echo "
"; done) More information $(for key in "${!ATTS[@]}"; do value=${ATTS[$key]}; ATT=$(cat $SAVEPATH/$value$EXT.base64); echo "--XYZ" echo "Content-Type: image/png;name=\"$value$EXT\"" echo "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64" echo "Content-ID: <$value>" echo "Content-Disposition: inline; filename=\"$value$EXT\"" echo "" echo "$ATT" done) --XYZ-- EOT for key in "${!ATTS[@]}"; do value=${ATTS[$key]}; rm $SAVEPATH/$value$EXT.base64; done The `--XYZ` variable has been copied from a script online. More images can be added in this loop by editing the array `ATTS`. Make sure they all have the same extension. [1]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212 [2]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/automate-all-the-things.png --- License: All the text on this website is free as in freedom unless stated otherwise. This means you can use it in any way you want, you can copy it, change it the way you like and republish it, as long as you release the (modified) content under the same license to give others the same freedoms you've got and place my name and a link to this site with the article as source. This site uses Google Analytics for statistics and Google Adwords for advertisements. You are tracked and Google knows everything about you. Use an adblocker like ublock-origin if you don't want it. All the code on this website is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 license unless already licensed under a license which does not allows this form of licensing or if another license is stated on that page / in that software: This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see . Just to be clear, the information on this website is for meant for educational purposes and you use it at your own risk. I do not take responsibility if you screw something up. Use common sense, do not 'rm -rf /' as root for example. If you have any questions then do not hesitate to contact me. See https://raymii.org/s/static/About.html for details.