Sending Transactional Email with TypeScript

The Digitel Africa Mail TypeScript SDK gives you fully typed requests and responses, so your editor autocompletes every field and the compiler catches mistakes before they ship.

Install the SDK

The SDK targets Node.js 18+ and ships its own type definitions.

npm install @digitel/sdk

Authenticate

Instantiate the client with your API key from process.env. Keep it server-side — never expose a live key in browser code.

import { Digitel } from "@digitel/sdk";

const digitel = new Digitel({ apiKey: process.env.DIGITEL_API_KEY! });

Send your first email

Every send is a promise, so await it. The response is typed as an email message.

const message = await digitel.email.messages.send({
  from: "[email protected]",
  to: ["[email protected]"],
  subject: "Your order is confirmed",
  html: "<h1>Thanks for your order</h1>",
});

console.log(message.id);

Read the response

The returned object is fully typed — message.id, message.status and the rest are all autocompleted.

{
  "id": "msg_01HZY8QK3P4RN2",
  "object": "email.message",
  "status": "queued",
  "to": ["[email protected]"],
  "created_at": "2026-08-21T09:15:42Z"
}

Attach files and send HTML

Attachments take a filename and base64 content. Render your HTML with any template library.

const message = await digitel.email.messages.send({
  from: "[email protected]",
  to: ["[email protected]"],
  subject: "Your invoice",
  html: renderedHtml,
  attachments: [{ filename: "invoice.pdf", content: pdfBase64 }],
});

Handle errors

Narrow caught errors to ApiError for typed access to the message and request id.

import { ApiError } from "@digitel/sdk";

try {
  await digitel.email.messages.send(payload);
} catch (err) {
  if (err instanceof ApiError) {
    console.error(`Send failed: ${err.message} (${err.requestId})`);
  }
}

Types are the cheapest tests you will ever write. Let the compiler check your email payloads so production never sees a typo.

Ready for more? The docs cover batching, scheduling and delivery webhooks.