Blat - A mailing utility

Often developers/testers come across scenarios where in they have to notify a team once a deployment or build is complete. There are many build management tools that provide us with such an option. There could be scenarios where in Maven or Ant is used for building purpose. In such scenarios emailing options should be considered through a third party tool. One such tool is "BLAT"

Blat is a Win32 command line utility that sends eMail using SMTP or post to usenet using NNTP. SMTP being the protocol that we use for email communication, Blat provides us with the option to send mails to the intended recipients.

Doing it the ANT way

Assuming your build process is setup using Ant and the last step that you want to do is to send an email. This is how to write an Ant target to achieve the same

  <target name="email-report">
         <exec dir="${basedir}"
          executable="${basedir}/../thirdparty/blat/blat.exe"
          os="Windows XP,Windows 2000,Windows 2003,Windows Server 2003,Windows Server 2008">
               <arg file="<location of the file you want to send as an attachment if any>"/>
               <arg line="-to <email address of the recipient>"/>
               <arg line="-f  <email address of the sender>"/>
               <arg line="-server <the SMTP server address>"/>
               <arg line="-i <email alias name>"/>
               <arg line="-s <'your subject within single quotes'>"/>
         </exec>

  </target>

Doing it the BAT way

Suppose if you have automated ur build process using batch script invoking specific goals or target and would like to also trigger mails from the batch, here is how you go about it.

<Location where blat is installed>\blat.exe "Attachment if any" -to "Recipient Email address" -f "Senders Email address" -i "Sender Email Alias" -s "Subject Line" -server "SMTP Server address"

This is a very simple email utility that not many of us know about. Happy mailing :)