Is there a way to programmatically mark a shipping email as sent? - magento

Question

Is there a way to programmatically mark a shipping email as sent? After combing through Google for some help, I have come up empty handed.
I have set up an observer to send out an email as soon as a tracking number is added to a shipment, but I need to be able to some how show in the admin that the email has been sent instead of displaying "the shipment email is not sent."
UPDATE
Here is the code that I have. I can get the email to send just fine, but I cannot get the email_sent flag to be set
class WR_TrackingEmail_Model_Observer
{
public function sendTrackEmail($observer)
{
$track = $observer->getEvent()->getTrack();
$shipment = $track->getShipment(true);
$shipment->sendEmail();
$shipment->setEmailSent(true);
}
}
UPDATE 2
After trying the following code, I run into a new issue. The item is marked as shipped but for some reason I get a million copies of the shipping email. I am assuming that a loop is happening somewhere. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong here?
public function sendTrackEmail($observer)
{
$track = $observer->getEvent()->getTrack();
$shipment = $track->getShipment(true);
$shipment->sendEmail();
$shipment->setEmailSent(true);
$saveTransaction = Mage::getModel('core/resource_transaction')
->addObject($shipment)
->addObject($shipment->getOrder())
->save();
}

Answer 1

Normally this is the way to set all the Shipment statuses, along with all the notification emails:-
$_eachOrderTrackingNum = 'ANY_SPECIFIC_TRACKING_NUMBER';
$arrTracking = array(
'carrier_code' => 'ups',
'title' => 'United Parcel Service',
'number' => $_eachOrderTrackingNum,
);
$track = Mage::getModel('sales/order_shipment_track')->addData($arrTracking);
$shipment->addTrack($track);
$emailSentStatus = $shipment->getData('email_sent');
$customerEmail = $order->getData('customer_email');
if (!is_null($customerEmail) && !$emailSentStatus) {
$shipment->sendEmail($customerEmail, '');
$shipment->setEmailSent(true);
}
$saveTransaction = Mage::getModel('core/resource_transaction')
->addObject($shipment)
->addObject($shipment->getOrder())
->save();
Here "$shipment" is an object of "Mage_Sales_Model_Order_Shipment", after the order has been converted to this Shipment object. Also the "$order" is the specific Order object.
Hope it helps.
UPDATE
After seeing your update, it seems that you need to use the following code for your method "sendTrackEmail()":-
public function sendTrackEmail($observer)
{
$track = $observer->getEvent()->getTrack();
$shipment = $track->getShipment(true);
$shipment->sendEmail();
$shipment->setEmailSent(true);
$saveTransaction = Mage::getModel('core/resource_transaction')
->addObject($shipment)
->addObject($shipment->getOrder())
->save();
}