zgo.at/blackmail

Blackmail is a Go package to send emails.

Current status: work-in-progress. Most of it works, but the API isn't stable yet and some things are not yet implemented as documented.

Why a new package? I didn't care much for the API of many of the existing solutions.

Import the library as zgo.at/blackmail; API docs: https://godocs.io/zgo.at/blackmail

There is also a smtp client library at zgo.at/blackmail/smtp which can be used without the main blackmail client if you want. It's a modified version of net/smtp (via go-smtp, although I removed most added features from that).

There is a small commandline utility at cmd/blackmail; try it with go run ./cmd/blackmail.

The main use case where you just want to send off an email and be done with it. Non-goals include things like parsing email messages, support for encodings other than ASCII and UTF-8, or a one-stop-shop for your very specific complex requirements. It should be able to handle all common (and not-so-common) use cases though.

Example

// Send a new message using blackmail.DefaultMailer
err := blackmail.Send("Send me bitcoins or I will leak your browsing history!",
    blackmail.From("", "[e-mail]"),
    blackmail.To("Name", "[e-mail]"),
    blackmail.Bodyf("I can haz ur bitcoinz?"))

// A more complex message with a text and HTML part and inline image.
err = blackmail.Send("I saw what you did last night 😏",
    blackmail.From("😏", "[e-mail]"),
    append(blackmail.To("Name", "[e-mail]"), blackmail.Cc("Other", "[e-mail]")...),
    blackmail.Text("Text part")
    blackmail.HTML("HTML part: <img src="cid:blackmail:1">",
        blackmail.InlineImage("image/png", "logo.png", imgbytes)))

// You can create your own (re-usable) mailer.
mailer := blackmail.NewMailer("smtp://user:pass@localhost:25")
err = mailer.Send([..])

// Add some options to your mailer.
mailer = blackmail.NewMailer("smtp://user:pass@localhost:25
    blackmail.MailerAuth(..),
    blackmail.MailerTLS(&tls.Config{}),
    blackmail.RequireSTARTLS(true))

// Get RF5322 message with a list of recipients to send it to (To + Cc + Bcc).
msg, to := blackmail.Message([.. same arguments as Send() ..])

See the test cases in blackmail_test.go for various other examples.

Questions you may have

I get the error "tls: first record does not look like a TLS handshake"

You are attempting to establish a TLS connection to a server which doesn't support TLS or only supports it via the STARTTLS command.

I get the error "x509: certificate signed by unknown authority"

The certificate chain used for the TLS connection is not signed by a known authority. It's a self-signed certificate or you don't have the root certificates installed.

How can I use a @ in my username?

Encode as %40:

smtp://carpetsmoker%40fastmail.nl:[e-mail]:587'

Dedication

I first had the idea of blackmail well over 10 years ago after seeing some Joe Armstrong interview where he mentioned he or a co-worker (I forgot) maintained an email client in the 80s blackmail. I rewrote my PHP "mailview" webmail client to Python years ago and called it blackmail, but never finished or released it.

Finally, after all these years I have a change to steal use the blackmail name for an email-related thing!

This package is dedicated to Joe Armstrong. I never programmed Erlang, but found many of his writings and talks insightful, and – more importantly – he was a funny guy.

…and now for the tricky bit…