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Sending Emails with Matlab

This method is (as far as I know) not found in the official Matlab’s documentation.  I found it a long time ago somewhere in the internet (don’t remember where, sorry). It’s intended for sending Emails using Matlab.

In order to use it, you should have an Email account which supports SMTP (eg. Gmail). This account will be the account we’re sending the messages through.

The script assumes you’re using Gmail, but it can be easily modified to use other Email suppliers (are there any?)

Here is the script, it’s a matlab function:

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function send_mail(recipients, subject, mail_message, attachments)

% send_mail sends a mail message through Gmail

% function send_mail(subject, recipients, mail_message, attachments)

% input arguments:

% subject: A string - subject of the mail

% recipents: A cell array of strings - Email addresses of recipients

%                 eg. {'mail1@mail.com', 'mail2@mail.com'}

% mail_message: A cell array of strings - Actual body of the message A cell per line.

% attachments: A cell array of string - A cell per attachment: path to a file to attach Email.

%                      Use [] for none.

% Define these:

mail = 'myemail@gmail.com'; %Your GMail email address

password = 'mypassword'; %Your GMail password

% Don't touch unless you need to change the Email supplier (currently Gmail)

setpref('Internet','E_mail',mail);

setpref('Internet','SMTP_Server','smtp.gmail.com');

setpref('Internet','SMTP_Username',mail);

setpref('Internet','SMTP_Password',password);

props = java.lang.System.getProperties;

props.setProperty('mail.smtp.auth','true');

props.setProperty('mail.smtp.socketFactory.class', 'javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory');

props.setProperty('mail.smtp.socketFactory.port','465');

% Send the email

sendmail(recipients, subject, mail_message, attachments);

And it can be called this way:

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send_to = {'friend@somesupplier.com'};

subject = 'hello';

message = {...

                   'hi dear!',...

                   'Just wanted to tell you what I think about you',...

                   'I HATE YOU!',...

                   'Not really :)',...

                   'Ah, see the attached pictures'...

          };

mypic1 = '../pictures/blabla/picture1.png';

mypic2 = '../pictures/blabla/picture2.png';

send_mail(send_to, subject, message, {mypic1, mypic2});

Notice that the username/password are hardcoded. If you’re concerned about this, you can pass them as arguments to the function. However, this way you’ll hide them from inside the function, but they’ll appear somewhere in the caller code.

Another method is generating the “pcode” (See Matlab’s help about pcode). In general, it’s an encrypted version of the M-file, which can be interpreted by Matlab, but cannot be read by others. I believe that this is the appropriate method in our case. Once you have the pcode, you don’t need the M-code anymore, and nobody can see your password.  (you can save a m-code version without the password/username inside it for later use if you want).

When I first tested this script, I called it from a 50-iterations for loop, sending the same Email to the same person 50 times (it included a figure from Matlab). Please don’t be like me since it’s an abuse of the script/Gmail, and I believe it’s a violation of Gmails TOS. You might end with your account disabled or blacklisted. So please use it wisely.

Thats it

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Tags: Matlab, Programming