• Fixed Excel attachments which were broken due to faulty conversion into RFC2822. (#314)
  • Modified tests to remove specific cases that no longer work in newer versions of R. (#310)

  • Fixed a problem where non-ASCII subject lines wouldn’t render correctly on the Windows platform when using smtp_send() (#241). (#242, thanks @shrektan!)

  • We replaced httr::POST() with httr::RETRY() when interacting with web APIs (Mailgun and Imgur). (#176, thank you @ataustin for contributing this PR.)

  • Made a correction to a format() statement to comply with CRAN policy.

  • Updated the SMTP vignette with regard to Gmail app passwords (#282). (#283, thanks @jnolis!)

  • Email content width is now customizable in the blastula_email() and compose_email() functions. The default width is now increased to 1000px (#178).

  • Added the delete_credential_key() and delete_all_credential_keys() functions for better management of credential keys added to the system key-value store by the create_smtp_creds_key() function (#173).

  • Added the creds_envvar() credential helper function, which allows for SMTP password input via an environment variable (#159).

  • Fixed incorrect rendering in Outlook, due to wrong line endings used for quoted-printable encoding (thanks @jdbarillas for identifying the source of the issue in #153).

  • Fixed Unicode issues on Windows (#154).

  • Fixed buggy internal logic for decoding numeric HTML entities that represent non-ASCII characters.

This release contains fixes for R CMD check problems on CRAN test machines.

The blastula package has transitioned to using the curl package for SMTP mailing.

There are new functions for integrating blastula with R Markdown publishing on the RStudio Connect service. And sophisticated email bodies can be generated with HTML Blocks.

Breaking Changes

  • send_email_out() has been removed; the smtp_send() function is its replacement for sending email through an SMTP server

  • The revised smtp_send() function internally uses curl::send_mail() to send RFC2822 email message that blastula now independently generates; now, there is no need to download third-party binaries to send via SMTP

  • The smtp_send() no longer offers text interpolation in { } (which was provided by glue::glue()) since this poses a security risk; email strings can be precomposed using glue::glue() independently, or, by using c(), paste()/paste0.

  • If an email message string contains Markdown text or HTML fragments, the md() function must be used to perform rendering

  • The create_email_creds_file() function has been removed in favor of a suite of functions for storing SMTP configuration info and credentials (create_smtp_creds_file(), create_smtp_creds_key()); the following credentials helper functions are available for retrieving or directly specifying configuration and credentials during sending: creds_file(), creds_key(), creds_anonymous(), and creds()

  • The preview_email() function has been removed as email objects created by compose_email() now have a print method

  • The .preheader_text argument in compose_email() has been removed because of display issues in certain email clients

New Features

Notes

  • Functions from the getPass package are used internally to ask for a password whenever necessary during an interactive session

  • Functions from the keyring package are used internally to aid in the storage and retrieval of SMTP config/credentials information in the system-wide key-value store (which is cross platform)

  • Moved local image URI data into list component, where references to image data are through CIDs

  • Implemented internal functions for Base64-encoding of local images, removing dependency on knitr

  • Removed dependencies on Java; reworked send_email_out() uses a cross-platform binary to send email message via SMTP

  • Added the prepare_test_message() function to create test email messages for testing purposes

  • Added a provider argument to the create_email_creds_file() function to more easily configure SMTP settings in a credentials file

  • Added the function add_readable_time() to allow for easy insertion of a readable version of the present time in a message

  • Added functions to compose (compose_email()), preview (preview_email()), and send (send_email_out() and send_by_mailgun()) HTML email messages

  • Added helper functions for inserting HTML fragments into the message body (add_cta_button(), add_image(), and add_ggplot())

  • Added a function to help generate a secret credentials file for sending email through SMTP