Sending email with attachment using amazon SES

Question

I am trying to send an email that contains an attachment (a pdf file) using the amazon SES API.

I am using Symfony2 so I included the AmazonWebServiceBundle in my pr

Answer 1

I managed to create a raw MIME Message in the below manner to send an email with attachment (.pdf file), using Amazon SES sendRawEmail. This is for plain javascript usage; one can surely refine it further add other Content-types too.

1. Use a library like jsPDF & html2Canvas to create the PDF file & save the contents into a variable & get the base 64 data:

   var pdfOutput = pdf.output();
   var myBase64Data = btoa(pdfOutput);
   

2. Use the below code to create the MIME Message. Note, the sequence is important else the email will end up as a text email exposing all the base 64 data :

   var fileName = "Attachment.pdf";
   var rawMailBody = "From: testmail@gmail.com\nTo: testmail@gmail.com\n";
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "Subject: Test Subject\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "MIME-Version: 1.0\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"NextPart\"\n\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "--NextPart\n";  
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "Content-Type: application/octet-stream\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"" + fileName + "\"\n\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "Content-ID random2384928347923784letters\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + myBase64Data+"\n\n"; 
   rawMailBody = rawMailBody + "--NextPart\n";
   

3. Invoke sendRawEmail:

    var params = {
         RawMessage: {
           Data: rawMailBody
         },
         Destinations: [],
         Source: 'testmail@gmail.com'
       };
   
    ses.sendRawEmail(params, function(err, data) {
      if (err) alert("Error: "+err); // an error occurred
      else     {
   
      alert("Success: "+data);           // successful response
      }
   
    }); 
   

Answer 2

After many tries, I got to the conclusion that sending emails to Amazon SES directly from the code is too much pain.

So I didn't change a thing in the code and configured my postfix server instead.

I followed this procedure: http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/SMTP.MTAs.Postfix.html and configured integration using STARTTLS.

I had to ask for SMTP credentials in the Amazon console.

Now it's working fine, emails are sent properly through Amazon SES.

Answer 3

Building emails by hand and as you clearly expressed "is too much pain" and so is maintaining your own server just to send emails. That is why I recommend using a library to take care of creating the email message.

For example, Swift mailer has a class called Swift_Message that can be used to create an email message and include attachments.

The following example is taken straight from the documentation:

$message = (new Swift_Message())
  ->setSubject('Your subject')
  ->setFrom(['john@doe.com' => 'John Doe'])
  ->setTo(['receiver@domain.org', 'other@domain.org' => 'A name'])
  ->setBody('Here is the message itself')
  ->addPart('<q>Here is the message itself</q>', 'text/html')
  ->attach(Swift_Attachment::fromPath('my-document.pdf'))

Then just call the toString method of the message and set it as the RawMessage

$result = $client->sendRawEmail([
    'RawMessage' => [
        'Data' => $message.toString()
    ]
]);      

Alternatively, you can setup symfony + swift mailer to use SES SMTP endpoint, see the symfony documentation for more information.

Answer 4

Yes, it is a pain to send emails with attachments using SES. Maybe this will help someone else out who is still struggling with it. I've written a simple class that helps simplify the call to sendRawEmail.

Usage:

$subject_str = "Some Subject";
$body_str = "<strong>Some email body</strong>";
$attachment_str = file_get_contents("/htdocs/test/sample.pdf");

//send the email
$result = SESUtils::deliver_mail_with_attachment(
    array('email1@gmail.com', 'email2@lutz-engr.com'),       
    $subject_str, $body_str, 'sender@verifiedbyaws', 
    $attachment_str);

//now handle the $result if you wish

Class:

<?php
require 'AWSSDKforPHP/aws.phar';
use Aws\Ses\SesClient;

/**
 * SESUtils is a tool to make it easier to work with Amazon Simple Email Service
 * Features:
 * A client to prepare emails for use with sending attachments or not
 * 
 * There is no warranty - use this code at your own risk.  
 * @author sbossen 
 * http://right-handed-monkey.blogspot.com
 */
class SESUtils {

    const version = "1.0";
    const AWS_KEY = "your_aws_key";
    const AWS_SEC = "your_aws_secret";
    const AWS_REGION = "us-east-1";
    const BOUNCER = "bouncer@yourdomain.com";  //if used, this also needs to be a verified email
    const LINEBR = "\n";
    const MAX_ATTACHMENT_NAME_LEN = 60;

    /**
     * Usage
     * $result = SESUtils::deliver_mail_with_attachment(array('receipt@r.com', 'receipt2@b.com'), $subject_str, $body_str, 'validatedsender@aws', $attachment_str);
     * use $result->success to check if it was successful
     * use $result->message_id to check later with Amazon for further processing
     * use $result->result_text to look for error text if the task was not successful
     * 
     * @param type $to - individual address or array of email addresses
     * @param type $subject - UTF-8 text for the subject line
     * @param type $body - Text for the email
     * @param type $from - email address of the sender (Note: must be validated with AWS as a sender)
     * @return \ResultHelper
     */
    public static function deliver_mail_with_attachment($to, $subject, $body, $from, &$attachment = "", $attachment_name = "doc.pdf", $attachment_type = "Application/pdf", $is_file = false, $encoding = "base64", $file_arr = null) {
        $result = new ResultHelper();
        //get the client ready
        $client = SesClient::factory(array(
                    'key' => self::AWS_KEY,
                    'secret' => self::AWS_SEC,
                    'region' => self::AWS_REGION
        ));
        //build the message
        if (is_array($to)) {
            $to_str = rtrim(implode(',', $to), ',');
        } else {
            $to_str = $to;
        }
        $msg = "To: $to_str".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .="From: $from".self::LINEBR;
        //in case you have funny characters in the subject
        $subject = mb_encode_mimeheader($subject, 'UTF-8');
        $msg .="Subject: $subject".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .="MIME-Version: 1.0".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .="Content-Type: multipart/alternative;".self::LINEBR;
        $boundary = uniqid("_Part_".time(), true); //random unique string
        $msg .=" boundary=\"$boundary\"".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .=self::LINEBR;
        //now the actual message
        $msg .="--$boundary".self::LINEBR;
        //first, the plain text
        $msg .="Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .="Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .=self::LINEBR;
        $msg .=strip_tags($body);
        $msg .=self::LINEBR;
        //now, the html text
        $msg .="--$boundary".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .="Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .="Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit".self::LINEBR;
        $msg .=self::LINEBR;
        $msg .=$body;
        $msg .=self::LINEBR;
        //add attachments
        if (!empty($attachment)) {
            $msg .="--$boundary".self::LINEBR;
            $msg .="Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64".self::LINEBR;
            $clean_filename = mb_substr($attachment_name, 0, self::MAX_ATTACHMENT_NAME_LEN);
            $msg .="Content-Type: $attachment_type; name=$clean_filename;".self::LINEBR;
            $msg .="Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$clean_filename;".self::LINEBR;
            $msg .=self::LINEBR;
            $msg .=base64_encode($attachment);
            //only put this mark on the last entry
            if (!empty($file_arr))
                $msg .="==".self::LINEBR;
            $msg .="--$boundary";
        }
        if (!empty($file_arr) && is_array($file_arr)) {
            foreach ($file_arr as $file) {
                $msg .="Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64".self::LINEBR;
                $clean_filename = mb_substr($attachment_name, 0, self::MAX_ATTACHMENT_NAME_LEN);
                $msg .="Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name=$clean_filename;".self::LINEBR;
                $msg .="Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$clean_filename;".self::LINEBR;
                $msg .=self::LINEBR;
                $msg .=base64_encode($attachment);
                //only put this mark on the last entry
                if (!empty($file_arr))
                    $msg .="==".self::LINEBR;
                $msg .="--$boundary";
            }
        }
        //close email
        $msg .="--".self::LINEBR;

        //now send the email out
        try {
            $ses_result = $client->sendRawEmail(array(
                'RawMessage' => array('Data' => base64_encode($msg))), array('Source' => $from, 'Destinations' => $to_str));
            if ($ses_result) {
                $result->message_id = $ses_result->get('MessageId');
            } else {
                $result->success = false;
                $result->result_text = "Amazon SES did not return a MessageId";
            }
        } catch (Exception $e) {
            $result->success = false;
            $result->result_text = $e->getMessage()." - To: $to_str, Sender: $from, Subject: $subject";
        }
        return $result;
    }

}


class ResultHelper {

    public $success = true;
    public $result_text = "";
    public $message_id = "";

}

?>

I've written a blog post that addresses this, maybe it will be useful to you or others: http://righthandedmonkey.com/2013/06/how-to-use-amazon-ses-to-send-email-php.html