Sending mail from Python using SMTP
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64505
italiano
english
français
española
中国
日本の
العربية
Deutsch
한국어
Português
RussianQuestion
I'm using the following method to send mail from Python using SMTP. Is it the right method to use or are there gotchas I'm missing ?
from smtplib import SMTP
import datetime
debuglevel = 0
smtp = SMTP()
smtp.set_debuglevel(debuglevel)
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 26)
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')
from_addr = "John Doe <john@doe.net>"
to_addr = "foo@bar.com"
subj = "hello"
date = datetime.datetime.now().strftime( "%d/%m/%Y %H:%M" )
message_text = "Hello\nThis is a mail from your server\n\nBye\n"
msg = "From: %s\nTo: %s\nSubject: %s\nDate: %s\n\n%s"
% ( from_addr, to_addr, subj, date, message_text )
smtp.sendmail(from_addr, to_addr, msg)
smtp.quit()
Solution
The script I use is quite similar; I post it here as an example of how to use the email.* modules to generate MIME messages; so this script can be easily modified to attach pictures, etc.
I rely on my ISP to add the date time header.
My ISP requires me to use a secure smtp connection to send mail, I rely on the smtplib module (downloadable at http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~db2501/ssmtplib.py)
As in your script, the username and password, (given dummy values below), used to authenticate on the SMTP server, are in plain text in the source. This is a security weakness; but the best alternative depends on how careful you need (want?) to be about protecting these.
=======================================
#! /usr/local/bin/python
SMTPserver = 'smtp.att.yahoo.com'
sender = 'me@my_email_domain.net'
destination = ['recipient@her_email_domain.com']
USERNAME = "USER_NAME_FOR_INTERNET_SERVICE_PROVIDER"
PASSWORD = "PASSWORD_INTERNET_SERVICE_PROVIDER"
# typical values for text_subtype are plain, html, xml
text_subtype = 'plain'
content="""\
Test message
"""
subject="Sent from Python"
import sys
import os
import re
from smtplib import SMTP_SSL as SMTP # this invokes the secure SMTP protocol (port 465, uses SSL)
# from smtplib import SMTP # use this for standard SMTP protocol (port 25, no encryption)
# old version
# from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
try:
msg = MIMEText(content, text_subtype)
msg['Subject']= subject
msg['From'] = sender # some SMTP servers will do this automatically, not all
conn = SMTP(SMTPserver)
conn.set_debuglevel(False)
conn.login(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
try:
conn.sendmail(sender, destination, msg.as_string())
finally:
conn.quit()
except:
sys.exit( "mail failed; %s" % "CUSTOM_ERROR" ) # give an error message
OTHER TIPS
The method I commonly use...not much different but a little bit
import smtplib
from email.MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['From'] = 'me@gmail.com'
msg['To'] = 'you@gmail.com'
msg['Subject'] = 'simple email in python'
message = 'here is the email'
msg.attach(MIMEText(message))
mailserver = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com',587)
# identify ourselves to smtp gmail client
mailserver.ehlo()
# secure our email with tls encryption
mailserver.starttls()
# re-identify ourselves as an encrypted connection
mailserver.ehlo()
mailserver.login('me@gmail.com', 'mypassword')
mailserver.sendmail('me@gmail.com','you@gmail.com',msg.as_string())
mailserver.quit()
That's it
Also if you want to do smtp auth with TLS as opposed to SSL then you just have to change the port (use 587) and do smtp.starttls(). This worked for me:
...
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 587)
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.starttls()
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')
...
The main gotcha I see is that you're not handling any errors: .login() and .sendmail() both have documented exceptions that they can throw, and it seems like .connect() must have some way to indicate that it was unable to connect - probably an exception thrown by the underlying socket code.
Make sure you don't have any firewalls blocking SMTP. The first time I tried to send an email, it was blocked both by Windows Firewall and McAfee - took forever to find them both.
What about this?
import smtplib
SERVER = "localhost"
FROM = "sender@example.com"
TO = ["user@example.com"] # must be a list
SUBJECT = "Hello!"
TEXT = "This message was sent with Python's smtplib."
# Prepare actual message
message = """\
From: %s
To: %s
Subject: %s
%s
""" % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)
# Send the mail
server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER)
server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
server.quit()
following code is working fine for me:
import smtplib
to = 'mkyong2002@yahoo.com'
gmail_user = 'mkyong2002@gmail.com'
gmail_pwd = 'yourpassword'
smtpserver = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com",587)
smtpserver.ehlo()
smtpserver.starttls()
smtpserver.ehlo() # extra characters to permit edit
smtpserver.login(gmail_user, gmail_pwd)
header = 'To:' + to + '\n' + 'From: ' + gmail_user + '\n' + 'Subject:testing \n'
print header
msg = header + '\n this is test msg from mkyong.com \n\n'
smtpserver.sendmail(gmail_user, to, msg)
print 'done!'
smtpserver.quit()
Ref: http://www.mkyong.com/python/how-do-send-email-in-python-via-smtplib/
You should make sure you format the date in the correct format - RFC2822.
See all those lenghty answers? Please allow me to self promote by doing it all in a couple of lines.
Import and Connect:
import yagmail
yag = yagmail.SMTP('john@doe.net', host = 'YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', port = 26)
Then it is just a one-liner:
yag.send('foo@bar.com', 'hello', 'Hello\nThis is a mail from your server\n\nBye\n')
It will actually close when it goes out of scope (or can be closed manually). Furthermore, it will allow you to register your username in your keyring such that you do not have to write out your password in your script (it really bothered me prior to writing yagmail!)
For the package/installation, tips and tricks please look at git or pip, available for both Python 2 and 3.
The example code which i did for send mail using SMTP.
import smtplib, ssl
smtp_server = "smtp.gmail.com"
port = 587 # For starttls
sender_email = "sender@email"
receiver_email = "receiver@email"
password = "<your password here>"
message = """ Subject: Hi there
This message is sent from Python."""
# Create a secure SSL context
context = ssl.create_default_context()
# Try to log in to server and send email
server = smtplib.SMTP(smtp_server,port)
try:
server.ehlo() # Can be omitted
server.starttls(context=context) # Secure the connection
server.ehlo() # Can be omitted
server.login(sender_email, password)
server.sendmail(sender_email, receiver_email, message)
except Exception as e:
# Print any error messages to stdout
print(e)
finally:
server.quit()
you can do like that
import smtplib
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.header import Header
server = smtplib.SMTP('mail.servername.com', 25)
server.ehlo()
server.starttls()
server.login('username', 'password')
from = 'me@servername.com'
to = 'mygfriend@servername.com'
body = 'That A Message For My Girl Friend For tell Him If We will go to eat Something This Nigth'
subject = 'Invite to A Diner'
msg = MIMEText(body,'plain','utf-8')
msg['Subject'] = Header(subject, 'utf-8')
msg['From'] = Header(from, 'utf-8')
msg['To'] = Header(to, 'utf-8')
message = msg.as_string()
server.sendmail(from, to, message)
Here's a working example for Python 3.x
#!/usr/bin/env python3
from email.message import EmailMessage
from getpass import getpass
from smtplib import SMTP_SSL
from sys import exit
smtp_server = 'smtp.gmail.com'
username = 'your_email_address@gmail.com'
password = getpass('Enter Gmail password: ')
sender = 'your_email_address@gmail.com'
destination = 'recipient_email_address@gmail.com'
subject = 'Sent from Python 3.x'
content = 'Hello! This was sent to you via Python 3.x!'
# Create a text/plain message
msg = EmailMessage()
msg.set_content(content)
msg['Subject'] = subject
msg['From'] = sender
msg['To'] = destination
try:
s = SMTP_SSL(smtp_server)
s.login(username, password)
try:
s.send_message(msg)
finally:
s.quit()
except Exception as E:
exit('Mail failed: {}'.format(str(E)))
