Sending a mail with a dynamic table from perl script - perl

Question

I have the following code in Perl:
foreach my $result ( #results ) {
if ( $result->{Error} ) {
print"No response received \n";}
else {
my $H = "$result->{H}";
my $I = "$result->{I}";
$mailbody.=qq(<h4 style="background: blue; color: white;">$H--->$I</h4>);
}
}
Here, I am using Mime::Lite to send mails:
$msg = MIME::Lite->new(
From => $from,
To => $to,
Cc => $cc,
Subject => $subject,
Data => $mailbody
);
$msg->attr("content-type" => "text/html/css");
$msg->send;
What I want is that the result data i.e $H and $I to be represented in the form of a table in the mail.
H | I
1 | 46
2 | 565756756767
3 | 232132
The number of rows of the table are dynamic and depend on the input given by the user. How can I do this?

Answer 1

If you want it to be a table in the email, you should create a table in the email body something like this:
$mailbody . = '<table>';
foreach my $result ( #results ) {
if ( $result->{Error} ) {
print"No response received \n";}
else {
my $H = "$result->{H}";
my $I = "$result->{I}";
$mailbody.=qq(<tr><td>$H</td><td>$I</td></tr>);
}
}
$mailbody . = '</table>';

Answer 2

If you want an HTML table in your email, then add HTML table elements to your output.
# Note: border=1 attribute to make the table borders visible.
$mailbody .= '<table border="1">';
foreach my $result ( #results ) {
if ( $result->{Error} ) {
print"No response received \n";}
else {
$mailbody .= qq(<tr><td>$result->{H}</td>)
. qq(<td>$result->{I}</td></tr>);
}
}
$mailbody .= </table>
In a comment to another answer that suggested something similar, you said that this doesn't work because you can't see the table borders. That was, of course, a simple case of adding border=1 so that the borders are displayed.
However.
It's always worth repeating that putting raw HTML strings into your program code is a terrible idea. It's a recipe for an unmaintainable mess. It's a bad idea when creating web applications and it's a bad idea when creating HTML to go into email bodies.
Far better to separate the code from creating the output and the best way to do that is to use a templating engine like the Template Toolkit. By creating a template file that contains all of the HTML output, you make it easier to change the way that the HTML looks without getting bogged down in the Perl code.
Also (and I've suggested this to you before) I would suggest that you avoid using MIME::Lite. But don't take my word for it. The current documentation for the module says this:
MIME::Lite is not recommended by its current maintainer. There are a number of alternatives, like Email::MIME or MIME::Entity and Email::Sender, which you should probably use instead. MIME::Lite continues to accrue weird bug reports, and it is not receiving a large amount of refactoring due to the availability of better alternatives. Please consider using something else.
I recommend switching to Email::Sender (together with Email::MIME) or Email::Stuffer.