Python 3: sending emails through any online webmail service

Question

what sort of python script/function/library would allow you to send emails through any webmail service, be it gmail, yahoo, hotmail, email from your own domain etc.?

I found several examples relating to the single cases (mostly gmail), but not an all-encompassing solution.

Ex.: user inputs username, password, webmail service, then can send an email from within the python program.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Well, you can see some examples of how to do it here: http://docs.python.org/3/library/email-examples.html

Otherwise, you can try this:

from smtplib import SMTP_SSL as SMTP
import logging, logging.handlers, sys
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

def send_message():
    text = '''
            Hello,

            This is an example of how to use email in Python 3.

            Sincerely,

            My name
            '''        
    message = MIMEText(text, 'plain')
    message['Subject'] = "Email Subject" 
    my_email = 'your_address@email.com'

    # Email that you want to send a message
    message['To'] = my_email

    try:
        # You need to change here, depending on the email that you use.
        # For example, Gmail and Yahoo have different smtp. You need to know what it is.
        connection = SMTP('smtp.email.com')
        connection.set_debuglevel(True)

        # Attention: You can't put for example: 'your_address@email.com'.
        #            You need to put only the address. In this case, 'your_address'.
        connection.login('your_address', 'your_password')

        try:
            #sendemail(<from address>, <to address>, <message>)
            connection.sendmail(my_email, my_email, message.as_string())
        finally:
            connection.close()
    except Exception as exc:
        logger.error("Error sending the message.")
        logger.critical(exc)
        sys.exit("Failure: {}".format(exc))

if __name__ == "__main__":
    logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
    logger.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
    ch = logging.StreamHandler()
    ch.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
    formatter = logging.Formatter('%(asctime)s - %(name)s - %(levelname)s - %(message)s')
    ch.setFormatter(formatter)
    logger.addHandler(ch)

    send_message()

Answer 2

You can send E-Mails via any webmail (that supports SMTP) with the smtplib module. That looks like this:

import smtplib
import getpass

servername = input("Please enter you mail server: ")
username = input("Please enter your username: ")
password = getpass.getpass() # This gets the password without echoing it on the screen
server = smtplib.SMTP(servername)
server.login(username, password)  # Caution this now uses plain connections
                                  # Read the documentations to see how to use SSL
to = input("Enter your destination address: ")
msg = input("Enter message: ")
message = "From: {0}@{1}\r\nTo: {2}\r\n\r\n{3}".format(username, servername, to, msg)
server.sendmail(username+"@"+servername, to, message)
server.quit

Please note that this example is neither clean nor tested. Look at the documentation for more information. Also it is very likely that you need to adjust a lot of stuff depending on the server you want to connect with.

For creating the message it's a good idea to look at the email module.