In a nutshell: SES is a reliable way to unload the burden of sending emails. Here’s how to harness Amazon’s Node.js SDK to send emails. The example below is a raw Node.js app, but should be easy enough to integrate with your framework of choice – e.g. Express / Geddy.

I’ve posted all the code in an example on github.

Some prerequisites

1. An Amazon AWS account with SES enabled.
2. Your Amazon Key and Secret.
3. Verfiy an email address at SES.

First, install the Amazon SDK.

npm install aws-sdk

Or you can add it as a dependency to your package.json:

{
    "dependencies": {
        "aws-sdk": "latest"
    }
}

Then create a config file to hold your amazon credentions – e.g. config.json:

{ "accessKeyId": "YOURAMAZONKEY", "secretAccessKey": "YOURAMAZONSECRET", "region": "us-west-2" }

This example is a single script, but it would work just fine integrated into an express route etc. There’s an explanation below:

// load aws sdk
var aws = require('aws-sdk');

// load aws config
aws.config.loadFromPath('config.json');

// load AWS SES
var ses = new aws.SES({apiVersion: '2010-12-01'});

// send to list
var to = ['email@example.com']

// this must relate to a verified SES account
var from = 'emailc@example.com'


// this sends the email
// @todo - add HTML version
ses.sendEmail( { 
   Source: from, 
   Destination: { ToAddresses: to },
   Message: {
       Subject:Source {
          Data: 'A Message To You Rudy'
       },
       Body: {
           Text: {
               Data: 'Stop your messing around',
           }
        }
   }
}
, function(err, data) {
    if(err) throw err
        console.log('Email sent:');
        console.log(data)console;
 });

The ses.sendEmail passes a json string with the necessary parameters required by Amazon SES. This example sends a text message, but if you look over the docs for the sendEmail call you will a HTML version can be easily passed (along with a host of other parameters).

The callback function accepts the defacto err argument for collecting any errors and above use the second parameter data to output the information the service sends back on a successful send.

Where to go from here.

The next logical step in this script would be to read in a text file for the body so you can send templated emails. Look to Node.js’ fs to achieve something like that.

You could also wrap this functionality in a module so you can reuse it across your app with a more succint syntax..