How to send emails in Golang
Introduction
net/smtp is a built-in go package and implements SMTP protocol. It provides a simple way for sending mail through smtp servers. We will explore the inbuilt net/smtp package and Gomail package to send out the emails.
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of Golang
- Go version 1.10 or higher.
Send an Email with net/smtp
Importing packages
package main
import (
"fmt"
"net/smtp"
)
Sending the email
package main
import (
"fmt"
"net/smtp"
"os"
)
// Main function
func main() {
// from is sender's email address
from := os.Getenv("MAIL")
password := os.Getenv("PASSWD")
// toList is a list of email addresses that email is to be sent
toList := []string{"[email protected]"}
// host is address of server that the sender's email address belongs,
// in this case it's gmail.
host := "smtp.gmail.com"
// It's the default port of smtp server
port := "587"
// This is the message to send in the mail
msg := "Hello World!"
// We can't send strings directly in mail,
// strings need to be converted into slice bytes
body := []byte(msg)
// PlainAuth uses the given username and password to
// authenticate to host and act as identity.
auth := smtp.PlainAuth("", from, password, host)
// SendMail uses TLS connection to send the mail
// The email is sent to all address in the toList,
// the body should be of type bytes, not strings
// This returns an error if any occurred.
err := smtp.SendMail(host+":"+port, auth, from, toList, body)
// handling the errors
if err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
os.Exit(1)
}
fmt.Println("Successfully sent email!")
}
Send an Email with Gomail
Importing package
package main
import (
"crypto/tls"
"fmt"
gomail "gopkg.in/mail.v2"
)
Sending the email
package main
import (
"crypto/tls"
"fmt"
gomail "gopkg.in/mail.v2"
)
func main() {
m := gomail.NewMessage()
m.SetHeader("From", "[email protected]")
m.SetHeader("To", "[email protected]")
m.SetHeader("Subject", "Sending Email with Goalang")
// Set the email body. You can set plain text or html with text/html
m.SetBody("text/plain", "Hello World!")
// Settings for SMTP server
d := gomail.NewDialer("smtp.gmail.com", 587, "[email protected]", "yourpassword")
// This is only needed when the SSL/TLS certificate is not valid on the server.
// In production this should be set to false.
d.TLSConfig = &tls.Config{InsecureSkipVerify: true}
if err := d.DialAndSend(m); err != nil {
fmt.Println(err)
panic(err)
}
return
}
Common Issues and Resolutions
Error: Invalid login: 535-5.7.8 Username and Password not accepted.
A potential solution to this error could be to enable the Gmail service to use it in third-party apps. To resolve this error just login in Gmail account and enable less secure apps using this link https://myaccount.google.com/lesssecureappsETIMEDOUT errors
Check your firewall settings. Timeout usually occurs when you try to open a connection to a port that is firewalled either on the server or on your machine.TLS errors
Check your antivirus settings. Antiviruses often mess around with email port usage. Node.js might not recognize the MITM cert your antivirus is using.
Latest Node versions allow only TLS versions 1.2 and higher, some servers might still use TLS 1.1 or lower. Check Node.js docs how to get correct TLS support for your app.
Conclusion
Gmail either works well or it does not work at all. It is probably easier to switch to an alternative email service provider such as Mailazy instead of fixing issues with Gmail. Using gmail for your production server isn’t recommended either, you should opt for an email provider to manage your emails.
Configuring and setting up Mailazy is easy and seamless and emails can be sent in a few minutes!