Send email from server via a G Suite email address

Question

I am attempting to send an email from a node.js server using nodemailer

I currently have a domain name registered with Google Domains and with this I have a G Suite instance setup to provide me with an email server.

I have an email setup: noreply@domainname.com

What im trying to do is send an email from email above from my server. I don't want to use plain user and password verification as this is very insecure for me.

Does anyone have a tutorial or document they could link me to that would help me achieve this?

Answer 1

Here is a Quickstart from the official Gmail API documentation.

Complete the steps described in the rest of this page, and in about five minutes you'll have a simple Node.js command-line application that makes requests to the Gmail API.

Snippet from the quickstart:

var fs = require('fs');
var readline = require('readline');
var google = require('googleapis');
var googleAuth = require('google-auth-library');

// If modifying these scopes, delete your previously saved credentials
// at ~/.credentials/gmail-nodejs-quickstart.json
var SCOPES = ['https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.readonly'];
var TOKEN_DIR = (process.env.HOME || process.env.HOMEPATH ||
    process.env.USERPROFILE) + '/.credentials/';
var TOKEN_PATH = TOKEN_DIR + 'gmail-nodejs-quickstart.json';

// Load client secrets from a local file.
fs.readFile('client_secret.json', function processClientSecrets(err, content) {
  if (err) {
    console.log('Error loading client secret file: ' + err);
    return;
  }
  // Authorize a client with the loaded credentials, then call the
  // Gmail API.
  authorize(JSON.parse(content), listLabels);
});

/**
 * Create an OAuth2 client with the given credentials, and then execute the
 * given callback function.
 *
 * @param {Object} credentials The authorization client credentials.
 * @param {function} callback The callback to call with the authorized client.
 */
function authorize(credentials, callback) {
  var clientSecret = credentials.installed.client_secret;
  var clientId = credentials.installed.client_id;
  var redirectUrl = credentials.installed.redirect_uris[0];
  var auth = new googleAuth();
  var oauth2Client = new auth.OAuth2(clientId, clientSecret, redirectUrl);

  // Check if we have previously stored a token.
  fs.readFile(TOKEN_PATH, function(err, token) {
    if (err) {
      getNewToken(oauth2Client, callback);
    } else {
      oauth2Client.credentials = JSON.parse(token);
      callback(oauth2Client);
    }
  });
}

/**
 * Get and store new token after prompting for user authorization, and then
 * execute the given callback with the authorized OAuth2 client.
 *
 * @param {google.auth.OAuth2} oauth2Client The OAuth2 client to get token for.
 * @param {getEventsCallback} callback The callback to call with the authorized
 *     client.
 */
function getNewToken(oauth2Client, callback) {
  var authUrl = oauth2Client.generateAuthUrl({
    access_type: 'offline',
    scope: SCOPES
  });
  console.log('Authorize this app by visiting this url: ', authUrl);
  var rl = readline.createInterface({
    input: process.stdin,
    output: process.stdout
  });
  rl.question('Enter the code from that page here: ', function(code) {
    rl.close();
    oauth2Client.getToken(code, function(err, token) {
      if (err) {
        console.log('Error while trying to retrieve access token', err);
        return;
      }
      oauth2Client.credentials = token;
      storeToken(token);
      callback(oauth2Client);
    });
  });
}

/**
 * Store token to disk be used in later program executions.
 *
 * @param {Object} token The token to store to disk.
 */
function storeToken(token) {
  try {
    fs.mkdirSync(TOKEN_DIR);
  } catch (err) {
    if (err.code != 'EEXIST') {
      throw err;
    }
  }
  fs.writeFile(TOKEN_PATH, JSON.stringify(token));
  console.log('Token stored to ' + TOKEN_PATH);
}

/**
 * Lists the labels in the user's account.
 *
 * @param {google.auth.OAuth2} auth An authorized OAuth2 client.
 */
function listLabels(auth) {
  var gmail = google.gmail('v1');
  gmail.users.labels.list({
    auth: auth,
    userId: 'me',
  }, function(err, response) {
    if (err) {
      console.log('The API returned an error: ' + err);
      return;
    }
    var labels = response.labels;
    if (labels.length == 0) {
      console.log('No labels found.');
    } else {
      console.log('Labels:');
      for (var i = 0; i < labels.length; i++) {
        var label = labels[i];
        console.log('- %s', label.name);
      }
    }
  });
}

To understand the concept and the implementation details, you can try Sending Email. To give you an overview, here is the way of sending email and high end workflow.

There are two ways to send email using the Gmail API:

• You can send it directly using the messages.send method.
• You can send it from a draft, using the drafts.send method.

Emails are sent as base64url encoded strings within the raw property of a message resource. The high-level workflow to send an email is to:

1. Create the email content in some convenient way and encode it as a base64url string.
2. Create a new message resource and set its raw property to the base64url string you just created.
3. Call messages.send, or, if sending a draft, drafts.send to send the message.

You can also refer to this tutorial from Nodemailer community site.

These docs apply to the unmaintained versions of Nodemailer v2 and older. For an upgraded and up to date Nodemailer v3+ documentation, see nodemailer.com homepage.

Answer 2

Instead of building whole logic for creating tokens you can simply use Passportjs google auth and then finally use the googleapis package to send emails.