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Send SMTP Gmail by a Local Script

Posted by Tom on the 26th of April, 2010, at 4:44 am.

I was reading about something different, when I stumbled upon the SendKeys Method—a scriptable method for controlling "applications that have no automation interface" by simulating keystrokes. Pretty cool.

Even cooler, however, is the following. This program prompts you for your Google-hosted mail login details (such as Gmail, Google Apps, or Google Apps for Education), then for a recipient, subject, message, and the path to an attachment (which must be less than 25 MB). It then uses the Collaboration Data Object to send the email using smtp.gmail.com. Witchcraft, I tell you.
To try this out, copy the code into a text document, and save it with the extension .wsf . Only works on Windows, AFAIK.

<package>

  <job id="vbs">
      <script language="VBScript">
            ' set shell = createobject("wscript.shell") 
         On Error Resume Next
          Dim Subject, Body, SenderEmail, RecipientEmail, SMTPServer, SMTPusername, SMTPpassword

          SMTPserver = "smtp.gmail.com"

           SMTPusername = InputBox("Full Gmail or Google Apps email address")
            SenderEmail = SMTPusername

          SMTPpassword = InputBox("Password")
           Subject = InputBox("Subject")

           RecipientEmail= InputBox("Recipient")

           Body = InputBox("Enter your message:")



          sch = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/cdo/configuration/"
           Set cdoConfig = CreateObject("CDO.Configuration")
         With cdoConfig.Fields
         .Item(sch & "smtpauthenticate") = 1
           .Item(sch & "smtpusessl") = True
          .Item(sch & "smtpserver") = SMTPserver
            .Item(sch & "sendusername") = SMTPusername
            .Item(sch & "sendpassword") = SMTPpassword
            .Item(sch & "smtpserverport") = 465
           .Item(sch & "sendusing") = 2
          .Item(sch & "connectiontimeout") = 100 
           .update
           End With
          Const cdoSendUsingPickup = "c:\inetpub\mailroot\pickup"
            Set cdoMessage = CreateObject("CDO.Message")
          With cdoMessage
           Set .Configuration = cdoConfig
            cdoMessage.From = SenderEmail
         cdoMessage.To = RecipientEmail
            cdoMessage.Subject = Subject
          cdoMessage.TextBody = Body
            ExecuteBlock = False
          If ExecuteBlock Then
              Set ObjFSO = CreateObject("UserAccounts.CommonDialog") 
               ObjFSO.Filter = "Text Documents|*.txt|All Files|*.*" 
             ObjFSO.FilterIndex = 2
                InitFSO = ObjFSO.ShowOpen
             If InitFSO = False Then
                   Wscript.Echo "Script Error: Please select a file!"
                    Wscript.Quit
              Else
                  Wscript.Echo "You selected a file, great!"
                End If
                Wscript.Echo "You selected the file: " & ObjFSO.FileName
          End If
            AttachmentPath = InputBox("Full path to an attachment. Leave blank for none.")
            If AttachmentPath <> "" Then
                CdoMessage.AddAttachment AttachmentPath
           End If
            cdoMessage.Send
           End With
          Set cdoMessage = Nothing
          Set cdoConfig = Nothing
           If Err.Number <> 0 Then
           Response.Write (Err.Description& "<br><br>")
            end if

          MsgBox "Message probably sent. At least, the script's now over."&VbCrLf&VbCrLf&"To: "&RecipientEmail&VbCrLf&"From: "&SenderEmail&VbCrLf&"Subject: "&Subject&VbCrLf&"Message: "&VbCrLf&Body&"",64,"Sendmail3.wsf"

       </script>
   </job>
</package>

Actually, this is the first non-hello-world program I've written for a non-web-scripting environment. I'm pretty sure it's in VBScript, which may or may not be the same thing as (or even related to) Visual Basic.

Ok, so I didn't actually write it myself. I modified the seed from bachir8k on this page. The attachment bit (and, of course, the InputBox() parts), however is all me.

As you can see there beneath If ExecuteBlock Then, I tried to get it to use the Common File Dialog, but it turns out that you need extra software for that, and I wanted this to be as pick-up-and-go as possible.