Can cron e-mail HTML?

[Derek Ragona]

At 03:03 PM 7/14/2007, Mikhail Teterin wrote:
>Hello!
>
>I have a script launched from cron every morning, that gets certain data over
>the Internet from a remote computer, compares the new data with that from the
>previous day, and outputs the difference (if any).
>
>I'm relying on the fact, that cron e-mails me the output of each job.
>
>However, I modified the script recently to produce the output (if any) in
>HTML, rather than in plain-text format.
>
>The HTML arrives by e-mail just as well as plain text used to, but no e-mail
>program will render it as such, because neither the cron(8), nor the mail(1),
>which cron uses to send e-mail, creates MIME messages...
>
>How can I force the ``Content-Type: text/html'' header without hacking cron's
>sources? I'd rather avoid poluting my script with e-mail sending code...
>
>Maybe, cron should apply file(1)-like logic to the e-mailed content?
>
>Thanks for any hints. Yours,

You need to change your script to send the email itself.  I have many 
scripts that email reports, legs, and html reports.  To accomplish this I 
have my cron job run a script like this (I have simplified the script you 
should be able to use it as a base):

#!/usr/local/bin/ksh
# set full paths for all commands needed, and files needed

MAIL=/usr/bin/mail
MAILFILE=/tmp/mail_file
#fill in your correct email or alias you wish to use
MAILTO=me at mydomain.com
RM=/bin/rm
DATE=/bin/date
AWK=/usr/bin/awk
LS=/bin/ls
GREP=/usr/bin/grep
FIND=/usr/bin/find
TODAY=`$DATE +%m-%d-%Y`
REPORT_LOG_HEADER=/usr/local/etc/report_log_header
REPORT_LOG_FOOTER=/usr/local/etc/report_log_footer

# start the mailfile with the proper header,
# in this case it is an HTML header
cat $REPORT_LOG_HEADER > $MAILFILE

#put more stuff into the report . . .
echo " " >> $MAILFILE
echo " " >> $MAILFILE
# Add any processing or log files to the middle of the mail file here
# you can even put HTML codes in here
echo "<BR> <BR>" >> $MAILFILE
echo " " >> $MAILFILE
# add the correct HTML footer
cat $REPORT_LOG_FOOTER >> $MAILFILE
# send it to yourself
$MAIL -s "the report name" $MAILTO < $MAILFILE
$RM $MAILFILE


         -Derek

-- 
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.
MailScanner thanks transtec Computers for their support.