How can I compose and send email in Thunderbird from commandline?

Question

I use this command to send a logfile with Thunderbird:

thunderbird -compose "subject='test',to='[email protected]',body=$output,attachment='/home/test/scan.log'"

That launches and shows Thunderbird's prefilled edit-message-window and I have to press the Send button manually.

How can I send email automatically?

Solution 1

Actually, it is possible, using xdotool. Though not "proper", it is possible.

You can (modify to suit your purpose) and save this to ~/bin/send-mail

#!/bin/bash

output='testing'

thunderbird -compose "subject='test mail',to='[email protected]',body=$output" &
sleep 2                  # Wait for the window to open
xdotool mousemove 55 105 # Find the exact position of the send button manually
sleep 0.25               # Might not be needed
xdotool click 1          # Click it
echo "Done!"

Make it executable:

chmod +x bin/send-mail

Addionally, add it to your cron job. But this sure can be risky.

Solution 2

Thunderbird doesn't support automatically sending an email using the command line (i.e. non interactively). This question was answered here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1144493

It suggests you communicate directly with the relevant SMTP server instead of using a mail client like Thunderbird.

Possibly using PHP -http://www.inmotionhosting.com/support/website/sending-email-from-site/using-the-php-mail-function-to-send-emails