Want a link in Markdown HTML to generate email, but not send it

Publishing Your Results
1

Sorry if this is a silly question, but I'm somewhat new to R. Currently I have an R Markdown script that generates an HTML file. I would like a function that works similarly to the HTML mailto function below in order to generate an email.

<a href="mailto:email@example.com?subject=Subject&body=Text">Send Email</A>

Several problems with just using the above code:

  • My Markdown script loops and I want a link for each of those loops, with different recepients and information in the body.
  • The information in the body is relatively long (several hundred words) and contains links and tables.

I think I could use something like glue or str_glue to create a character variable with all that information and then input that into the HTML code. But this seems very difficult and would probably limit functionality like sending links or tables.

I also think there is more functionality in something like javascript to create emails, but I'm not very familiar with javascript, and not sure there's a way to get the information I have pulled in the R parts of my code (email addresses and unique information for the body of the email) into whatever email that javascript code would produce.

I do not want to automatically email anything, only to generate the email in the user's own email service (Outlook) so that they can review it and hit 'send.'

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi @mlasure

this should get you started

---
title: '195568'
output: html_document
date: "2024-12-10"
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
```

## Email

```{r example}
plot(1:10,1:10)
```

Really nice plot. Want more [Email text for user](mailto:email@example.com?subject=Subject&body=Text)
1 Like
3

Do you know of a simple way to include things like tables or very long text in the body of the email with that script?

4

So long text is possible

---
title: '195568'
output: html_document
date: "2024-12-10"
---

```{r setup, include=FALSE}
knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE)
```

## Email

The following long text will be in the body of the email

```{r table, echo = FALSE}
longtext <- paste0(rep(LETTERS,30))
```

Want more [Email text for user](mailto:email@example.com?subject=Subject&body=`r longtext`)

For tables there is no easy way. Depending on where it is opened you would have to format the tables in a specific way. If the client (f.e. Outlook) supports something like HTML rendering you could provide it but i would advice against going into that direction.

1 Like
5

It will definitely be opened in Outlook, as this is an internal report to be used by my team.