Mail

Description

A task to send SMTP email.

This task can send mail using either plain text, UU encoding, or MIME format mail, depending on what is available.

SMTP auth and SSL/TLS require JavaMail or JakartaMail and are only available in MIME format.

Attachments may be sent using nested <attachments> elements, which are path-like structures. This means any filesystem based resource or resource collection can be used to point to attachments. Prior to Apache Ant 1.7 only <fileset> has been supported as a nested element, you can still use this directly without an <attachments> container.

Note: This task may depend on external libraries that are not included in the Ant distribution. See Library Dependencies for more information.

Starting with Ant 1.10.13 Ant supports either the modern jakarta.mail as well as the older javax.mail implementations and will prefer jakarta.mail if both are available.

Parameters

Attribute Description Required
from Email address of sender. Either a from attribute, or a <from> element.
replyto Reply-to email address. No
tolist Comma-separated list of recipients. At least one of these, or the equivalent nested elements
cclist Comma-separated list of recipients to carbon copy
bcclist Comma-separated list of recipients to blind carbon copy
message Message to send in the body of the email. One of these or a <message> element.
messagefile File to send as the body of the email. Property values in the file will be expanded.
messagefileinputencoding Specifies the encoding of the input file. Please see Supported Encodings for a list of possible values. Since Ant 1.9.4 No; defaults to default JVM character encoding
messagemimetype The content type of the message. No; default is text/plain
files Files to send as attachments to the email. Separate multiple file names using a comma or space. You can also use <fileset> elements to specify files. No
failonerror flag to indicate whether to halt the build on any error. No; default is true
includefilenames Include filename(s) before file contents. No; default is false, ignored unless plain encoding is used
mailhost Host name of the SMTP server. No; default is localhost
mailport TCP port of the SMTP server. No; default is 25
user user name for SMTP auth Yes, if SMTP auth is required on your SMTP server;
the email message will be then sent using MIME and requires JavaMail
password password for SMTP auth Yes, if SMTP auth is required on your SMTP server;
the email message will be then sent using MIME and requires JavaMail
ssl true, on, or yes accepted here
indicates whether you need TLS/SSL		 No
encoding Specifies the encoding to use for the content of the email. Values are mime, uu, plain, or auto. uu or plain are not compatible with SMTP auth No; default is auto
charset Character set of the email.
You can also set the charset in the message nested element.
These options are mutually exclusive.		 No
subject Email subject line. No
ignoreInvalidRecipients (boolean) Whether the task should try to send the message to as many recipients as possible and should only fail if neither is reachable. Since Ant 1.8.0. No; default is false
enableStartTLS (boolean) Whether the STARTTLS command used to switch to an encrypted connection for authentication should be supported. Requires JavaMail. Since Ant 1.8.0 No

Note regarding the attributes containing email addresses

Since Ant 1.6, the attributes from, replyto, tolist, cclist, bcclist can contain email addresses of the form:

You need to enter the angle brackets as XML entities &gt; and &lt;.

Parameters specified as nested elements

to / cc / bcc / from/ replyto

Adds an email address element. It takes the following attributes:

Attribute Description Required
name The display name for the address. No
address The email address. Yes

message

Specifies the message to include in the email body. It takes the following attributes:

Attribute Description Required
src The file to use as the message. No
mimetype The content type to use for the message. No
charset Character set of the message
You can also set the charset as attribute of the enclosing mail task.
These options are mutually exclusive.		 No
inputencoding Specifies the encoding of the input file. Please see Supported Encodings for a list of possible values. Since Ant 1.9.4 No; defaults to default JVM character encoding

If the src attribute is not specified, then text can be added inside the <message> element. Property expansion will occur in the message, whether it is specified as an external file or as text within the <message> element.

header

Since Ant 1.7, arbitrary mail headers can be added by specifying these attributes on one or more nested header elements:

Attribute Description Required
name The name associated with this mail header. Yes
value The value to assign to this mail header. Yes

It is permissible to duplicate the name attribute amongst multiple headers.

Examples

Send an email from me to you with a subject of Results of nightly build and include the contents of the file build.log in the body of the message.

<mail from="me"
      tolist="you"
      subject="Results of nightly build"
      files="build.log"/>

Send an email from config@myisp.com to all@xyz.com with a subject of Test Build. Replies to this email will go to me@myisp.com. Any zip files from the dist directory are attached. The task will attempt to use JavaMail and fall back to UU encoding or no encoding in that order depending on what support classes are available. ${buildname} will be replaced with the buildname property's value.

<mail mailhost="smtp.myisp.com" mailport="1025" subject="Test build">
  <from address="config@myisp.com"/>
  <replyto address="me@myisp.com"/>
  <to address="all@xyz.com"/>
  <message>The ${buildname} nightly build has completed</message>
  <attachments>
    <fileset dir="dist">
      <include name="**/*.zip"/>
    </fileset>
  </attachments>
</mail>

Send an email from me@myisp.com to all@xyz.com with a subject of Test Build, the message body being coded in UTF-8. 

<property name="line2" value="some_international_message"/>
<echo message="${line2}"/>

<mail mailhost="somehost@xyz.com" mailport="25" subject="Test build"  charset="utf-8">
  <from address="me@myist.com"/>
  <to address="all@xyz.com"/>
  <message>some international text:${line2}</message>
</mail>