Emailing under Windows using R
Programatically sending an email under Linux is relatively simple. There are several command line clients such as sendmail and mail which are very easy to use. There are also several R packages to help send emails such as {mailr} and {blastula}.
Generally you need access to an SMTP to send messages programatically and this may not be possible in a work setting.
Here's a simple R function to send an email under Windows. It uses vbs scripting to send an email via the Outlook client itself, without needing server parameters.
1#' Send an email with attachments
2#'
3#' Sends an email to a recipient using vbs scripting.
4#' `body` contains the body of the email and `files` contains a list of files
5#' to attach.
6#'
7#' @param to Recipient email address
8#' @param subject Subject line
9#' @param body Body text
10#' @param files List of files to attach
11#'
12#' @export
13lc_send_email <- function(to = NULL, subject = "", body = "", files = list()) {
14
15 if (is.null(to)) return(NULL)
16
17 if (length(files) > 0) {
18 v.files <- unlist(sapply(files, function(f) {
19 paste0('myAttachments.Add "', normalizePath(f), '", olByValue')
20 }))
21 } else {
22 v.files <- ''
23 }
24
25 ## build a vbs script to send an email to user
26 v.outlook_commands <- c(
27 'Dim olApp',
28 'Dim objMailItem',
29 'Dim myAttachments',
30 'Set olApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")',
31 'Set objMailItem = olApp.CreateItem(0)',
32 'Set myAttachments = objMailItem.Attachments',
33 paste0('objMailItem.Subject = "', subject, '"'),
34 paste0('objMailItem.To = "', to, '"'),
35 paste0('objMailItem.Body = "', body, '"'),
36 v.files,
37 'objMailItem.Send',
38 'Set olApp = Nothing',
39 'Set objMailItem = Nothing'
40 )
41
42 ## write script to temporary location
43 script_file <- tempfile(fileext = '.vbs')
44 sink(script_file, append = FALSE)
45 cat(v.outlook_commands, sep='\n')
46 sink()
47
48 ## execute script
49 system_script <- paste0('WScript ', normalizePath(script_file))
50 system(system_script)
51
52}