How to send email using smtp in Golang
Wale Moshoodsmtp stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It is used to send emails, and it works by moving messages between email clients and servers.
The Go language provides a library that adds email functionality to a Go app and thus makes this package easy to use.
Syntax
This package uses the syntax below to send emails.
func SendMail(addr server:
port, a Auth, from email_address,
to []email_address,
msg []content_here) errorParameters
The address attribute addr allows the user to connect to a server and must include:
- A
portnumber - An authentication method
- The sender and recipient’s email addresses
- The markup language (
HTML) that will be included in themessage - An
errorfor clarification purposes.
Steps to send an email
Follow the steps below to send an email using smtp.
1. Use the PlainAuth function to provide an authentication mechanism
Plain authentication is a method of authorizing an email client to send an email to its recipient.
Parameters
This function accepts four arguments which are of the string type.
They include:
-
username- the sender’s email address. -
password- the sender’s email password. -
port- theSMTPport server. -
identity- an empty string that acts asusername.
Syntax
func PlainAuth(identity,
username,
password,
host string) AuthThe syntax above represents the PlainAuth function which returns an Auth. The returned Auth uses the given username, password and acts as an identity to authenticate the host.
2. Use the Auth obtained to send an email with the SendMail function
This function sends the email. It connects to the mail server using the authentication (Auth) earlier created from the PlainAuth function.
Below is a sample code snippet that uses smtp to send an email.
package main
import (
"log"
"net/smtp"
)
func main() {
// Configuration
from := "samplemail@gmail.com"
password := "12345samplemail"
to := []string{"recipient@email.com"}
smtpHost := "smtp.gmail.com"
smtpPort := "587"
message := []byte("Hello! I'm trying out smtp to send emails to recipients.")
// Create authentication
auth := smtp.PlainAuth("", from, password, smtpHost)
// Send actual message
err := smtp.SendMail(smtpHost+":"+smtpPort, auth, from, to, message)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}Sensitive data like passwords should not be used directly in the code.
The best practice is to use environment (env) variables for configuration.
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