• Fixed erroneous use of sprintf(). (#335, thanks @pabecer!)

• Updated full product name of Connect. (#334, thanks @aronatkins!)

• Updated several GHA workflows (#336). (#337)

• 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

• Added functions useful for scheduled email sending in RStudio Connect during publication of R Markdown documents: render_email(), render_connect_email(), attach_connect_email(), blastula_email(), suppress_scheduled_email(), prepare_rsc_example_files()

• The compose_email() function now has a header argument, allowing for content to populate the area above the body

• Images embedded in email messages by using add_image() are now properly encoded as Base64 in the outgoing message; more MIME types are supported thanks to functions provided by the mime package

• The new add_imgur_image() function allows us to deploy a local image to Imgur and retrieve the image tag (all in one step); this is useful if you want to use external images in an email message

• We can now build sophisticated email messages with HTML blocks. With these responsive, higher-level components, we can create compose elements within the header, body, and footer components. The functions now available for this system are: blocks(), block_title(), block_text(), block_spacer(), block_articles(), and block_social_links(). Two useful subcomponent functions are article() and social_link().

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 STMP 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