Helot

Sending personal emails to LOTS of people should not be a pain in the ass. Helot lets you send an email to a CSV list of recipients, based on a Markdown template.

This project was developed entirely in my browser using SourceLair.

Installation

To install Helot just run npm install -g helot.

Usage

Command Line Interface

To send an email to a CSV list of recipients with Helot, run the following command in your terminal:

helot --template=/path/to/template.md --recipients=/path/to/recipients.csv

Command Line Options

The Command Line Interface of Helot can be configured using the following options:

template

The path to the front-matter enabled Markdown template that Helot should parse and render with each recipient's data.

Template example

---
subject: Party next week
---

Hello {{ name }},

Next week we are throwing a party at **Awesome Place**. What about leaving {{ address }} and coming over?

It would be awesome to meet there and have fun.

Looking forward to seeing you.

Cheers,
Paris

recipients

The path to the recipients file that will be used to send the emails and render each template.

Example recipients file

name,email,address
John Doe,john@example.com,1 Sesame str.
Bob,bob@example.com,1024 Public Rd.
Alice,alice@example.com,2048 Private Rd.

out (optional)

Path to a file to which output should be written instead of stderr.

dry-run (optional)

Don't send any email. Just print the output.

env-file (optional)

Path to a file that contains environment variables to load. Default value: .env

Example env file

SMTP_SERVER=smtp.gmail.com
SMTP_PORT=465
SMTP_LOGIN=youremail@gmail.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=your email password
HELOT_FROM=Your name <youremail@gmail.com>

Environment Configuration

Helot should be configured to send emails through an SMTP server. Configuration should happen using the environment variables documented below.

SMTP_SERVER

This is the address of the SMTP server that will send the emails. Example value: smtp.gmail.com.

SMTP_PORT

This is the port used to access the SMTP server that will send the emails. Example value: 465.

SMTP_LOGIN

This is the login (username) used to authenticate with the SMTP server that will send the emails. Example value: youremail@gmail.com.

SMTP_PASSWORD

This is the password used to authenticate with the SMTP server that will send the emails, along with the given SMTP login/username. Example value: your email password.

HELOT_FROM

This is the address from which the emails will be sent. Example value: Paris Kasidiaris <paris@sourcelair.com>.

Default value: If this environment variable is not configured it will fall back to the value of SMTP_LOGIN.

License

Helot is licensed under the MIT License. Detailed license info can be found at the LICENSE file.