Sending mail from Python using SMTP

Question

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 SM         


        

Answer 1

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/

Answer 2

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)

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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()

Answer 5

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.

Answer 6

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