smvp 0.4.0

Send a formatted email from the command line

Send Mail Via Python (smvp)

The smvp utility reads a file, uses its contents as the body of an email, and sends it to a specified recipient. The input file can be a text file with ANSI color codes, HTML, or plain text. The resulting message is sent as a multipart MIME email that renders properly in both plain text and HTML. The --content-type option can auto-detect the input type or force it to be handled as plain text or HTML.

Note: The file itself is not sent as an attachment; instead, the contents of the file are put into the body of the email.

Use Case

There are probably several use cases, but I wrote smvp for two primary reasons:

1. Configuring postfix and sendmail was more trouble than I wanted.
2. I want my cron scripts to email me status information and the contents of various log files. Some of the files contain ANSI escape sequences for terminal colors. The smvp utility converts those ANSI escape sequences into styled HTML, so the emails I get are nicely formatted. You could set $MAILTO in your crontab, but you would not get proper handling of ANSI escape sequences, and you would still have the problem mentioned in item 1.

Installation

Use your preferred Python package installer for command line tools, for example:

pipx install smvp

or

uv tool install smvp

or

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip3 install smvp

Requirements

First

Make sure the following environment variables are set and exported in your current shell:

export SMVP_USER="<your email>"    # e.g. "[e-mail]"
export SMVP_TOKEN="<your token>"   # e.g. "<gmail app password>"
export SMVP_SERVER="<smtp server>" # e.g. "smtp.gmail.com"

It is recommended that you add the lines above to your shell startup file (.bashrc, .zshrc, etc.) so they are available across multiple shell sessions and processes. To confirm that the environment variables are set correctly, run this in a terminal:

set | grep ^SMVP_

Note: If you make changes to your "rc" file, make sure to source it or open a new terminal window before running smvp again.

---

Tip: If you're using cron and sending mail with smvp from within a script, make sure to include the environment variables at the top of your crontab so your scripts will have access to them during execution. Also include a line in your script that exports the directory where your Python tool installer places executables. For example, if you're using uv on Ubuntu, you could put something like this near the top of your bash script:

# Setup PATH export so the script can find installed Python tools
export PATH="$PATH:/home/<yourhome>/.local/bin"

Second

The SMVP_SERVER you select must support secure TLS connections on port 587. Check the SMTP settings for your email provider. This is the default TLS port on Gmail, so if you are using your Gmail account to send email, this requirement is usually already satisfied.

Styling

smvp offers custom font and font size options for your email. The default font for formatted HTML email is Courier New, 12px. Beyond the default, you can choose any font size from 2px up to and including 100px, from the following font families:

"Andale Mono", "Arial", "Brush Script MT", "Comic Sans MS",
"Courier New", "Garamond", "Georgia", "Helvetica", "Impact",
"Luminari", "Monaco", "Tahoma", "Times New Roman", "Trebuchet MS",
"Verdana", "fantasy", "monospace", "sans-serif", "serif"

Note: Not every font will render properly on every device. When in doubt, fonts like: "monospace", "sans-serif", "fantasy", and "serif" are pretty safe. You may just have to try a few options to land on the right one for your use case.

Content Type

By default, smvp uses --content-type auto, which inspects the input and decides whether to treat it as plain text or HTML. You can override that behavior when needed:

auto  Auto-detect whether the input should be treated as text or HTML
text  Always treat the input as plain text, including HTML-like content
html  Always treat the input as HTML

This is useful when the input contains angle brackets that should be sent literally, or when you want to force HTML rendering for a file that would not otherwise be detected as HTML.

Usage

usage: smvp [-h] [-c {auto,text,html}] [-f FONT_FAMILY] [-s FONT_SIZE] [-v] recipient subject file

For example:

smvp [e-mail] "Hello, Friend" ~/logfile.txt -f "Trebuchet MS" -s 14

Force plain-text handling for HTML-like input:

smvp [e-mail] "Raw Markup" ./snippet.txt --content-type text

Force HTML handling:

smvp [e-mail] "Rendered Markup" ./fragment.txt --content-type html

For more details, run:

smvp -h