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Send e-mails

This documentation describes how you can send e-mails from applications deployed on the SAP BTP to your e-mail servers. When defining e-mail servers by using the destination service on the SAP BTP, both Internet and OnPremise destinations are supported.

Caution

Only basic auth is supported for the time being, and OAuth based authentication types are not fully tested.

Installation​

Run this command in your root directory of your project to install the mail-client dependency and add it to your dependency list:

npm install @sap-cloud-sdk/mail-client

Examples​

In this section you find minimal examples illustrating how to send e-mails using the SAP Cloud SDK.

Send an E-Mail​

First, create a mailConfig object that contains all the essential information of an e-mail:

import { sendMail, MailConfig } from '@sap-cloud-sdk/mail-client';

const mailConfig: MailConfig = {
  from: 'from@example.com',
  to: 'to@example.com',
  subject: 'e-mail subject',
  text: 'e-mail text'
};

Send the e-mail by calling the sendMail() function with mailConfig as argument:

sendMail({ destinationName: 'my-mail-destination' }, [mailConfig]);

The first parameter is either a destination object or DestinationFetchOptions. For productive environment, you should use the destination service on the SAP BTP and reference the destination by name, just like in the example above. { destinationName: 'my-mail-destination' } is the minimal object that is typed as DestinationFetchOptions. For test environment, instead of using the DestinationFetchOptions, you can also pass a complete destination object.

Caution

As the destination object might contain credentials, using it in production should be avoided.

You can read more about the abstraction of the destination in the documentation here.

Send Multiple E-Mails​

The code snippets below show how to send two e-mails with the mailConfig created in the previous example. The e-mails are sent in parallel by default.

sendMail({ destinationName: 'my-mail-destination' }, [mailConfig, mailConfig]);

Send E-Mails Sequentially​

Sometimes you prefer sending e-mails sequentially instead of parallelly due to, e.g., the rate limit of your e-mail server. To send e-mails in a sequence, set the parallel option to false.

sendMail({ destinationName: 'my-mail-destination' }, [mailConfig, mailConfig], {
  sdkOptions: {
    parallel: false
  }
});
tip

As parallelization is the default behaviour, you don't have to set parallel: true explicitly.

Configure Nodemailer​

The SAP Cloud SDK uses the node package Nodemailer under the hood. Nodemailer supports creating a transport based on options listed in their documentation. The SAP Cloud SDK exposes these options (as SmtpTransportOptions) and will transfer them based on user input. For example, you can provide the TLS option like below to circumvent issues with self-signed certificates:

sendMail({ destinationName: 'my-mail-destination' }, [mailConfig], {
  tls: {
    rejectUnauthorized: false
  }
});

The SAP Cloud SDK API documentation of the complete SmtpTransportOptions can be found in the API doc here.

DEBUGGING OPTIONS

Set debug and logger options to true to log all the data that is passed to the server in the console. The debug option logs SMTP traffic when true, otherwise only transaction events are logged. If logger is not set or set to false, nothing gets logged.

Proxy​

Nodemailer also supports defining proxy option as mentioned here. Similar to other Nodemailer options, the proxy key is also part of the SmtpTransportOptions. You can find a minimal example below for defining an HTTP proxy:

sendMail({ destinationName: 'my-mail-destination' }, [mailConfig], {
  proxy: 'http://my-proxy-host:1234'
});

Using socks proxy is not supported for the time being. For on-premise connectivity via the connectivity service on the SAP BTP, please check the next section.

caution

The SAP Cloud SDK will pass the proxy option directly to the Nodemailer, but the proxy feature is not end-to-end tested.

On-Premise Destination​

The SAP Cloud SDK supports using on-premise destinations as well. From the SAP Cloud SDK API perspective, the code looks similar, no matter whether you use OnPremise destinations or Internet destinations. The only difference is that you have to reference the name of the on-premise destination, which is obvious.

What's the Difference​

First, for applications deployed on the SAP BTP, you need a connectivity service for connecting to an on-premise destination. Second, a cloud connector is used as a proxy for accessing the on-premise system. Please make sure the mail destination is configured correctly as discussed in the documentation.

SOCKS5 Proxy Implementation​

Using a SOCKS5 proxy for accessing on-premise systems from applications on SAP BTP requires the SOCKS5 authentication flow as explained here. The SAP Cloud SDK handles the SOCKS5 proxy implementation automatically when detecting an on-premise mail destination.

tip

For some on-premise e-mail servers, including the test server, the parallelization of sending e-mail might be a challenge. You can disable the parallelization by passing parallel: false as mentioned above.