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  • MvSMTP Usage and Headers

Miva Script 101 / MvSMTP Usage and Headers

MvSMTP Usage and Headers

MvSMTP

The MvSMTP mivascript tag (Mv - Simple - Mail - Transfer - Protocol) is what you use to send out an email. Basic usage is very easy. You have an email address the message is going to, an email address it's being sent from, a subject, and a message. The easiest way to use MvSMTP would be something like the following. Note that mailhost could be different in your setup (but usually it's not.)

<MvSMTP 
  FROM = "some_email_address@some_domain.com"
  TO = "some_email_address@some_domain.com"
  SUBJECT = "This is your subject."
  MAILHOST = "localhost"> 
  Hi, this is an email message.
</MvSMTP>

The MvSMTP tag has quite a few other options if you want to get more advanced.

<MvSMTP 
  FROM = "string: { expression } | string: { expression }"
  TO = "string: { expression } | literal"
  CC = "string: { expression } | literal"
  SUBJECT = "string: { expression } | literal"
  FLAGS = "string: { expression } | literal"
  MAILHOST = "string: { expression } | literal"
  PORT = "string: { number } | literal number"
  USERNAME = "string: { expression } | literal"
  PASSWORD = "string: { expression } | literal"> 
</MvSMTP>

Common SMTP Headers

You don't need to know how and why all of this works, but if you are curious and want some light reading, check out these two Request for Comments documents.

• RFC 5321: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
• RFC 5322: Internet Message Format

MvSMTP Custom Headers

It's kind of silly that the MvSMTP tag doesn't include attributes such as To-Name and From-Name because if it did, we'd save all sorts of coding time. But it doesn't so we have to create headers to use real names which is expected for any email message.

To create custom headers the first thing you do is set the noheaders flag, then you manually create the required headers by displaying them in the message body. Here's an example from Scot's Mailing List source code.

<MIVA STANDARDOUTPUTLEVEL = ""> 
<MvSMTP
  FROM="{ l.from_email }"
  TO="{ l.to_email }"
  USERNAME="{ l.smtpuser }"
  PASSWORD="{ l.smtppass }"
  MAILHOST="{ l.host }"
  PORT="{ l.mailport }"
  FLAGS = "noheaders" >
  <MvEVAL EXPR = "{ l.to }">
  <MvEVAL EXPR = "{ l.from }">
  <MvIF EXPR = "{ l.reply }">
    <MvEVAL EXPR = "{ l.reply }">
  </MvIF>
  <MvEVAL EXPR = "{ l.date }">
  <MvEVAL EXPR = "{ l.subject }">
  <MvEVAL EXPR = "{ l.xheaders }">
  <MvEVAL EXPR = "{ l.message }">
</MvSMTP>

All of the data is set previously in local variables, example values below. Note that each of the header lines such as l.from, l.reply, l.date, etc, all have a carriage-return/line-feed at the end, added behind the scenes. This CR/LF is required and the emails will be glitchy if you don't do it this way. Here's how you create a CR/LF variable in Miva Script.

<MvASSIGN NAME="l.cr" VALUE="{ asciichar(13) $ asciichar(10) }">