# Sending emails from silverbullet

**URL:** <https://community.silverbullet.md/t/sending-emails-from-silverbullet/2236>\
**Category:** Tricks & Techniques\
**Created:** [April 22, 2025, 10:58pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/sending-emails-from-silverbullet/2236 "2025-04-22T22:58:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bnjbvr](https://community.silverbullet.md/user_avatar/community.silverbullet.md/bnjbvr/32/345_2.png) [@bnjbvr](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/bnjbvr)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2025, 10:58pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/sending-emails-from-silverbullet/2236/1 "2025-04-22T22:58:31Z")

</div>

Based on [Custom search for v2 using git grep](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/custom-search-for-v2-using-git-grep/2231) and answers, in the category “Because I can”, here’s a small tutorial to send emails from Silverbullet, assuming you already have some correctly configured SMTP relay host server.

- make sure to have some flavor of `sendmail` on the machine/container running Silverbullet
  - I’m using a Docker container, so I’ve downloaded a release of [GitHub - n0madic/sendmail: Standalone drop-in replacement for sendmail with direct send](https://github.com/n0madic/sendmail) (it’s practical to have a statically linked binary, yay go), and linked it as a volume in the container: `./sendmail:/usr/bin/sendmail`.
  - I’ve also had to set up the relayhost mode with an environment variable, in the `docker-compose.yml`: `SENDMAIL_SMART_HOST=smtp.example.org:587`

- in your config, add a string value for `from_email`, that will be the sender email: `from_email = "test@example.org"`
- use the following script:

```lua
command.define {
  name = "Send an email",
  run = function()
    local to = editor.prompt("To:")
    if to == nil then return end
    local subject = editor.prompt("Subject")
    if subject == nil then return end
    local content = editor.prompt("Content")
    if content == nil then return end

    local from = config.get('from_email')

    -- Write the content of the email into a temporary file.
    local run = function()
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "rm -f /tmp/email.msg && touch /tmp/email.msg" })
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "echo 'To: ".. to .."' >> /tmp/email.msg"})
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "echo 'From: " .. from .. "' >> /tmp/email.msg"})
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "echo 'Subject: ".. subject .."' >> /tmp/email.msg"})
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "echo >> /tmp/email.msg"})
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "echo '" .. content .. "' >> /tmp/email.msg"})
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "echo '.' >> /tmp/email.msg"})
      shell.run('bash', { '-c', "cat /tmp/email.msg | sendmail " .. to })
    end

    local status, result = pcall(run)
    if not status then
      editor.flashNotification('error when sending email: ' .. result)
    end
  end
}

```

Now you have a command `Send email` that will allow sending oneliners to anyone. Yay. Silverbullet-based email client when?

Okay, don’t use this for realz, though; but maybe, maybe it can be used in some very specific contexts…

## Implementation notes

- I wish I could’ve used `shell.spawn()` to send the content of the `email.msg` file via `stdin`, instead of the series of `bash -c "echo"` hacks resulting in the same. But every call to `send()` would then result in `Websocket not connected`. Is this a regression, or a misconfiguration on my server, or…?
- I’ve had to use a protected call (`pcall`), because while there was an error while running the final call to bash, I never saw it in the result return’s `stdout` or `stderr`; only saw the error in the browser’s developer console as a JS error, and that’s why I’ve used a `pcall` for this. Is this a bug?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/user_avatar/community.silverbullet.md/zef/32/7_2.png) [@zef](https://community.silverbullet.md/u/zef)\
**Post date:** [April 24, 2025, 6:48pm UTC](https://community.silverbullet.md/t/sending-emails-from-silverbullet/2236/2 "2025-04-24T18:48:28Z")

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Haha I like it. You people do crazy stuff when handed the right/wrong tools 😆