flask-mail gmail: connection refused

Question

I'm getting the following error when I attempt to use flask-mail to send an email through my gmail account.

error: [Errno 10061] No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it

I've tried configuring flask-mail in various ways, but so far I always get this error.

Here are some sample configurations I've tried:

1. app = Flask(__name__)
   mail = Mail(app)
   
   app.config.update(dict(
       DEBUG = True,
       MAIL_SERVER = 'smtp.gmail.com',
       MAIL_PORT = 465,
       MAIL_USE_TLS = False,
       MAIL_USE_SSL = True,
       MAIL_USERNAME = 'my_username@gmail.com',
       MAIL_PASSWORD = 'my_password',
   ))
   

2. app = Flask(__name__)
   mail = Mail(app)
   
   app.config.update(dict(
       DEBUG = True,
       MAIL_SERVER = 'smtp.gmail.com',
       MAIL_PORT = 587,
       MAIL_USE_TLS = True,
       MAIL_USE_SSL = False,
       MAIL_USERNAME = 'my_username@gmail.com',
       MAIL_PASSWORD = 'my_password',
   ))
   

3. This configuration is from the flask mega-tutorial (http://blog.miguelgrinberg.com/post/the-flask-mega-tutorial-part-xi-email-support)

   app = Flask(__name__)
   mail = Mail(app)
   
   app.config.update(dict(
       DEBUG = True,
       # email server
       MAIL_SERVER = 'smtp.googlemail.com',
       MAIL_PORT = 465,
       MAIL_USE_TLS = False,
       MAIL_USE_SSL = True,
       MAIL_USERNAME = 'my_username',
       MAIL_PASSWORD = 'my_password',
   
       # administrator list
       ADMINS = ['my_username@gmail.com']
   ))
   

Has anyone else experienced a similar problem?

Answer 1

As far as I can tell there is nothing wrong with this configuration. The only problem is that your application is not using it. You should update configuration before you initialize Mail:

app = Flask(__name__)

app.config.update(dict(
    DEBUG = True,
    MAIL_SERVER = 'smtp.gmail.com',
    MAIL_PORT = 587,
    MAIL_USE_TLS = True,
    MAIL_USE_SSL = False,
    MAIL_USERNAME = 'my_username@gmail.com',
    MAIL_PASSWORD = 'my_password',
))

mail = Mail(app)

Answer 2

In addition to zero323's answer, adding the configuration before creating a Mail object should help, but if it gives an SMTPAuthentication error with a gmail server, then just for testing purpose one may allow less secure apps to login for a while - https://myaccount.google.com/security#signin

Answer 3

from flask import Flask
from flask_mail import Mail, Message

app = Flask(__name__)
app.config['MAIL_SERVER'] = 'smtp.gmail.com'
app.config['MAIL_PORT'] = 587
app.config['MAIL_USE_TLS'] = True
app.config['MAIL_USERNAME'] = 'youremail@gmail.com'
app.config['MAIL_PASSWORD'] = 'your_email_password'

mail = Mail(app)

@app.route('/')
def home():
    msg = Message('mail title', sender='sender of the email', recipients=['recipient2gmail.com'])
    msg.body = 'Body of the email to send'
    return 'Mail Sent...'


if __name__ == '__main__':
    app.run()

Running the with the right configurations should enable send an email. Notice the mail is initialized after the configurations have been sent.

In case of any other errors, make sure your google account allows access from less secure applications.