email with templates (with variables) from the command line with sendmail or any other MTA.

I was trying to get templates to work on evolution and found that although templates are there in evolution mail client, its not that efficient to use. What I thus wanted was to have something that could allow me to send mails to (and cc and bcc) to specified people with predefined template, only some values changed, like changelog and so on. So I wrote a set of files and below files to achieve the same. Hope it helps you too 🙂

First we will have a file called \”fields\” containing all the variable that we intend to use:

cc=\”Amit Agarwal\”

Ok, so here we are defning the to field, cc field and the other fields along with the name of the file to attach. Next we need the template to use. Create a file called \”template.changelog\” as defined in the above file:


Please find the changelog for $tag for $product-$customer. Issue addressed : $issue .



Next we have a shell script called \”\” to actually send the mail. Here is the script:

source ./fields
rm -rf .temp .temp1
touch .temp
sed \”s/\\$product/$product/g\” $template > .temp1
sed \”s/\\$customer/$customer/g\” .temp1 > .temp

sed \”s/\\$issue/$issue/g\” .temp1 > .temp1
sed \”s/\\$tag/$tag/g\” .temp1 > .temp

rm -f .temp1
sendEmail -xu user  -xp pass  -s server  -f agarwal -t \”$to\” -cc \”$cc\” -u \”[$product-$customer]:$subject for $issue\” -o message-file=.temp -a $attachment
echo \”Mail sent with \\nSubject $subject \\nto $to \\nand copied to $cc and \\nattached $attachment\”

In the shell script I am using sendEmail, but you can use any MTA that you want. 🙂

Well, I think you get the idea, so you can modify the script to include the necessary checks and modify according to your needs.


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