How can I log all outgoing email in Django?

Question

My Django application sends out quite a bit of emails and I\'ve tried testing it thoroughly. However, for the first few months, I\'d like to log all outgoing emails to ensure th

Answer 1

I wrote a custom email backend which logs the stuff to a model.

Here's my backend:

from django.core.mail.backends.smtp import *
from django.db import transaction

from modules.common.models import *

class LoggingEmailBackend(EmailBackend):
    """
    A wrapper around the SMTP backend that logs all emails to the DB.
    """
    def send_messages(self, email_messages):
    """
    A helper method that does the actual logging
    """
    with transaction.commit_on_success():

        for email_message in email_messages:

            email_record = Email.objects.create(
                to='; '.join(email_message.recipients()),
                subject=email_message.subject, body=email_message.body,
            )

            try:
                return super(LoggingEmailBackend, self)._send(
                    email_message
                )
            except:
                email_record.ok = False
                return False
            finally:
                email_record.ok = True
                return True

Here's the model:

class Email(models.Model):
    """
    Model to store all the outgoing emails.
    """
    when = models.DateTimeField(
        null=False, auto_now_add=True
    )
    to = models.EmailField(
        null=False, blank=False,
    )
    subject = models.CharField(
         null=False, max_length=128,
    )
    body = models.TextField(
        null=False, max_length=1024,
    )
    ok = models.BooleanField(
        null=False, default=True,
    )

Here's my model:

from django.contrib import admin

from modules.common.models import *

class EmailAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    """
    Admin part for managing the the Email model
    """
    list_display = ['to', 'subject', 'ok',]
    list_filter = ['ok']
    readonly_fields = ['when', 'to', 'subject', 'body', 'ok']
    search_fields = ['subject', 'body', 'to']

    def has_delete_permission(self, request, obj=None):
        return False

    def has_add_permission(self, request):
        return False


admin.site.register(Email, EmailAdmin)

Answer 2

Django offers custom E-Mail backends, you can write one on your own.

Answer 3

Since the OP asked about logging and not about saving to DB, here's a middleware that does that:

import django.core.mail.backends.smtp
import logging

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)  # or you could enter a specific logger name

class LoggingBackend(django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend):

  def send_messages(self, email_messages):
    try:
        for msg in email_messages:
            logger.info(u"Sending message '%s' to recipients: %s", msg.subject, msg.to)
    except:
        logger.exception("Problem logging recipients, ignoring")

    return super(LoggingBackend, self).send_messages(email_messages)

and then in your settings.py:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'whereiputit.LoggingBackend'

Answer 4

I do not know if there exists a module that works this way, but writing a custom one is a piece of cake. Just create a separate model and every time you send an email, create a new instance ( use a custom method for email sending ). Then, link this model with the admin and bingo..