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I'm trying to send email attachments using the SES CLI, but every time the mail arrives and I open the attachment I get an error in Adobe:

could not open the file because it is either not a supported file type or because the file has been damaged.

The command I'm using is:

aws ses send-raw-email --raw-message file:///root/AWS/INSPECTOR/message.json

And the contents of that file is:

{
   "Data": "From: sender@exmple.com\nTo: recipient@example.com\nSubject: Test email sent using the AWS CLI (contains an attachment)\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-type: Multipart/Mixed; boundary=\"NextPart\"\n\n--NextPart\nContent-Type: text/plain\n\nThis is the message body.\n\n--NextPart\nContent-Type: application/pdf;\nContent-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"report.pdf\";\npath=\"\/tmp\/report.pdf\"\n\n--NextPart--"
}

I've seen the page at http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ses/send-raw-email.html but I can't quite get the syntax correct, so any help would be appreciated....

freginold
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the_real_pelican
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3 Answers3

2

I was able to write some code for a college to solve the same issue for plain/text. I did try this with a PDF type but unfortunately I wasn't able to get that working correctly, the received file seemed to be corrupt. I think for other file types you have to encode it in base64 but not sure on the exact structure to be used with the cli.

echo '{"Data": "From: from@domain.com\nTo: to@domain.com\nSubject: [Subject]\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-type: Multipart/Mixed; boundary=\"NextPart\"\n\n--NextPart\nContent-Type: text/plain\n\n[Body]\n\n--NextPart\nContent-Type: text/plain;\nContent-Disposition: attachment; filename=\"test.txt\"\n\n'$(cat ./input.txt)'\n--NextPart--"}' > message.json & aws ses send-raw-email --region eu-west-1 --raw-message file://./message.json

Essentially the cat command in the middle writes the text into the message.json so that it can be dynamic. Hope this helps someone.

EDIT

Thanks to @James Dean:

The following is an example with a PDF attachment:

echo '{"Data": "From: from@domain.com\nTo: to@domain.com\nSubject: [Subject]\nMIME-Version: 1.0\nContent-type: Multipart/Mixed; boundary=\"NextPart\"\n\n--NextPart\nContent-Type: text/plain\n\n[Body]\n\n--NextPart\nContent-Type: application/pdf;\nContent-Disposition: attachment;\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: base64; filename=\"test.pdf\"\n\n'$(base64 test.pdf)'\n--NextPart--"}' > message.json & aws ses send-raw-email --region eu-west-1 --raw-message file://./message.json

Cheers,

Alexei Blue.

Alexei Blue
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2

The attachment should be passed in Base64 encoding with specifying Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64 in the MIME.

Here is the link of previous thread where I answered: Sending aws cli SES as a file attachmennt

James Dean
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0

The sample you tried to adapt adds plain text and embeds it to the email. You are trying to add a pdf, however you are only adding the header to the mail, but you aren't adding the pdfs content.

You need to embed the pdf base64 encoded as well.

Doing a quick search this answer to the slightly different question "How to embed images in email" might help you with the embedding. Instead of an image you want to embedded a pdf in this case.

If properly prepare your json and it should work with the aws-cli.

Udo Held
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