How to Read the Body of an Email From Python Code Using Easymap

What do you need to send an email with Python? Some bones programming and web knowledge along with the simple Python skills. Nosotros presume you lot've already had a web app built with this language and at present you lot need to extend its functionality with notifications or other emails sending. This tutorial will guide you through the most essential steps of sending emails via an SMTP server:

1. Configuring a server for testing (practice yous know why it's important?)
   • Local SMTP server
   • Mailtrap false SMTP server
2. Different types of emails: HTML, with images, and attachments
3. Sending multiple personalized emails (Python is just invaluable for electronic mail automation)
4. Some popular e-mail sending options similar Gmail and transactional email services

Served with numerous code examples!

Note: written and tested on Python iii.7.2.

Sending an email using SMTP

The first good news about Python is that it has a built-in module for sending emails via SMTP in its standard library. No extra installations or tricks are required. Yous tin can import the module using the post-obit statement:

          import smtplib        

To brand sure that the module has been imported properly and get the total description of its classes and arguments, blazon in an interactive Python session:

          help(smtplib)        

At our next stride, we will talk a chip about servers: choosing the right option and configuring it.

SMTP server for testing emails in Python

When creating a new app or calculation any functionality, specially when doing it for the first time, it's essential to experiment on a test server. Here is a brief list of reasons:

1. You won't hitting your friends' and customers' inboxes. This is vital when you examination bulk email sending or work with an email database.
2. Yous won't flood your own inbox with testing emails.
3. Your domain won't be blacklisted for spam.

Local SMTP server

If you prefer working in the local surroundings, the local SMTP debugging server might be an option. For this purpose, Python offers an smtpd module. It has a DebuggingServer characteristic, which will discard messages you are sending out and will impress them to stdout. It is compatible with all operations systems.

Ready your SMTP server to localhost:1025

          python -chiliad smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:1025        

In society to run SMTP server on port 25, you lot'll need root permissions:

          sudo python -m smtpd -n -c DebuggingServer localhost:25        

It will assistance y'all verify whether your code is working and point out the possible problems if at that place are any. However, it won't give you lot the opportunity to check how your HTML email template is rendered.

Fake SMTP server

Faux SMTP server imitates the work of a real tertiary party web server. In further examples in this post, we will use Mailtrap. Beyond testing email sending, it volition let us check how the email will be rendered and displayed, review the message raw information every bit well as will provide us with a spam report. Mailtrap is very easy to prepare: y'all will demand just re-create the credentials generated by the app and paste them into your lawmaking.

Here is how it looks in practice:

          import smtplib port = 2525 smtp_server = "smtp.mailtrap.io" login = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # your login generated by Mailtrap countersign = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # your countersign generated past Mailtrap        

Mailtrap makes things even easier. Go to the Integrations section in the SMTP settings tab and become the set up-to-use template of the unproblematic message, with your Mailtrap credentials in it. It is the about basic option of instructing your Python script on who sends what to who is the sendmail() case method:

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The code looks pretty straightforward, right? Permit's have a closer look at it and add some error handling (see the #explanations in between). To grab errors, nosotros apply the "effort" and "except" blocks. Refer to the documentation for the list of exceptions here.

          # the first footstep is always the same: import all necessary components: import smtplib from socket import gaierror  # now you can play with your code. Allow's define the SMTP server separately hither: port = 2525 smtp_server = "smtp.mailtrap.io" login = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your login generated by Mailtrap countersign = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your password generated by Mailtrap  # specify the sender's and receiver's email addresses sender = "from@example.com" receiver = "mailtrap@example.com"  # blazon your message: utilize 2 newlines (\n) to separate the subject from the message trunk, and use 'f' to  automatically insert variables in the text message = f"""\ Discipline: Hi Mailtrap To: {receiver} From: {sender}  This is my first bulletin with Python."""  try:     #send your message with credentials specified in a higher place     with smtplib.SMTP(smtp_server, port) as server:         server.login(login, password)         server.sendmail(sender, receiver, bulletin)      # tell the script to report if your message was sent or which errors demand to be stock-still     print('Sent') except (gaierror, ConnectionRefusedError):     impress('Failed to connect to the server. Bad connection settings?') except smtplib.SMTPServerDisconnected:     print('Failed to connect to the server. Wrong user/password?') except smtplib.SMTPException as due east:     impress('SMTP mistake occurred: ' + str(eastward))        

Once you become the Sent effect in Beat, you should come across your message in your Mailtrap inbox:

Sending HTML email

In well-nigh cases, you need to add some formatting, links, or images to your electronic mail notifications. We tin can simply put all of these with the HTML content. For this purpose, Python has an email package.

Nosotros will bargain with the MIME message type, which is able to combine HTML and manifestly text. In Python, information technology is handled by the email.mime module.

Information technology is improve to write a text version and an HTML version separately, and then merge them with the MIMEMultipart("culling") example. Information technology ways that such a message has two rendering options appropriately. In instance an HTML isn't exist rendered successfully for some reason, a text version volition still be available.

Input:

          # import the necessary components start import smtplib from electronic mail.mime.text import MIMEText from e-mail.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart port = 2525 smtp_server = "smtp.mailtrap.io" login = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your login generated past Mailtrap password = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your countersign generated by Mailtrap sender_email = "mailtrap@instance.com" receiver_email = "new@example.com" bulletin = MIMEMultipart("alternative") message["Subject"] = "multipart test" message["From"] = sender_email bulletin["To"] = receiver_email # write the plain text part text = """\ Howdy, Check out the new post on the Mailtrap blog: SMTP Server for Testing: Cloud-based or Local? /blog/2018/09/27/cloud-or-local-smtp-server/ Experience free to let us know what content would be useful for you!""" # write the HTML role html = """\ <html>   <body>     <p>Hi,<br>        Check out the new post on the Mailtrap web log:</p>     <p><a href="/blog/2018/09/27/cloud-or-local-smtp-server">SMTP Server for Testing: Cloud-based or Local?</a></p>     <p> Feel gratuitous to <strong>let united states</strong> know what content would exist useful for y'all!</p>   </body> </html> """ # convert both parts to MIMEText objects and add them to the MIMEMultipart message part1 = MIMEText(text, "plain") part2 = MIMEText(html, "html") message.attach(part1) bulletin.attach(part2) # send your email with smtplib.SMTP("smtp.mailtrap.io", 2525) equally server:     server.login(login, password)     server.sendmail(         sender_email, receiver_email, bulletin.as_string()     ) print('Sent')                  

Output:

Sending emails with attachments in Python

The next step in mastering sending emails with Python is attaching files. Attachments are still the MIME objects simply we need to encode them with the base64 module. A couple of important points near the attachments:

1. Python lets y'all attach text files, images, audio files, and even applications. Yous just need to use the appropriate electronic mail class like e-mail.mime.audio.MIMEAudio or e-mail.mime.image.MIMEImage. For the total information, refer to this section of the Python documentation. Also, you tin can check the examples provided by Python for a better understanding.
2. Remember about the file size: sending files over 20MB is a bad practice.

In transactional emails, the PDF files are the about frequently used: we ordinarily get receipts, tickets, boarding passes, orders confirmations, etc. Then permit's review how to ship a boarding pass as a PDF file.

Input:

          import smtplib  # import the corresponding modules from email import encoders from e-mail.mime.base of operations import MIMEBase from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart from email.mime.text import MIMEText  port = 2525 smtp_server = "smtp.mailtrap.io" login = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your login generated by Mailtrap password = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your password generated past Mailtrap  subject = "An example of boarding pass" sender_email = "mailtrap@example.com" receiver_email = "new@example.com"  message = MIMEMultipart() message["From"] = sender_email message["To"] = receiver_email bulletin["Subject"] = subject area  # Add together body to email body = "This is an example of how you lot can send a boarding pass in zipper with Python" bulletin.attach(MIMEText(body, "plain"))  filename = "yourBP.pdf" # Open PDF file in binary mode  # We assume that the file is in the directory where you lot run your Python script from with open(filename, "rb") as attachment:     # The content type "application/octet-stream" means that a MIME attachment is a binary file     part = MIMEBase("application", "octet-stream")     part.set_payload(attachment.read())  # Encode to base64 encoders.encode_base64(part)  # Add header part.add_header(     "Content-Disposition",     f"zipper; filename= {filename}", )  # Add zipper to your message and convert it to string message.attach(role) text = bulletin.as_string()  # ship your email with smtplib.SMTP("smtp.mailtrap.io", 2525) as server:     server.login(login, countersign)     server.sendmail(         sender_email, receiver_email, text     ) print('Sent')                  

To adhere several files, y'all can call the bulletin.attach() method several times.

How to send an e-mail with images

Images, fifty-fifty if they are a part of the message trunk, are attachments as well. There are three types of them: CID attachments (embedded equally a MIME object), base64 images (inline embedding), and linked images. Nosotros have described their peculiarities, pros and cons, and compatibility with most email clients in this mail.

Let's jump to examples.

For adding a CID attachment, we will create a MIME multipart bulletin with MIMEImage component:

          # import all necessary components import smtplib from email.mime.text import MIMEText from email.mime.image import MIMEImage from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart  port = 2525 smtp_server = "smtp.mailtrap.io" login = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your login generated by Mailtrap password = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your countersign generated past Mailtrap  sender_email = "mailtrap@case.com" receiver_email = "new@example.com" message = MIMEMultipart("alternative") bulletin["Subject"] = "CID prototype test" message["From"] = sender_email bulletin["To"] = receiver_email  # write the HTML function html = """\ <html>  <body>    <img src="cid:Mailtrapimage">  </trunk> </html> """  office = MIMEText(html, "html") bulletin.attach(role)  # We assume that the image file is in the same directory that you run your Python script from fp = open('mailtrap.jpg', 'rb') image = MIMEImage(fp.read()) fp.shut()  # Specify the  ID co-ordinate to the img src in the HTML part image.add_header('Content-ID', '<Mailtrapimage>') message.adhere(paradigm)  # send your email with smtplib.SMTP("smtp.mailtrap.io", 2525) equally server:    server.login(login, password)    server.sendmail(        sender_email, receiver_email, message.as_string()    ) print('Sent')        

Output:

The CID epitome is shown both every bit a part of the HTML message and equally an attachment. Messages with this image type are oftentimes considered spam: check the Analytics tab in Mailtrap to see the spam rate and recommendations on its improvement. Many email clients  – Gmail in particular – don't display CID images in most cases. So let's review how to embed a base64 encoded prototype.

Here nosotros will apply base64 module and experiment with the same prototype file:

          # import the necessary components starting time import smtplib from email.mime.text import MIMEText from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart import base64  port = 2525 smtp_server = "smtp.mailtrap.io" login = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your login generated by Mailtrap password = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your password generated by Mailtrap  sender_email = "mailtrap@case.com" receiver_email = "new@case.com" message = MIMEMultipart("alternative") message["Bailiwick"] = "inline embedding" bulletin["From"] = sender_email message["To"] = receiver_email  # We presume that the paradigm file is in the aforementioned directory that y'all run your Python script from encoded = base64.b64encode(open("mailtrap.jpg", "rb").read()).decode()  html = f"""\ <html>  <torso>    <img src="data:image/jpg;base64,{encoded}">  </body> </html> """  part = MIMEText(html, "html") message.attach(function)  # send your electronic mail with smtplib.SMTP("smtp.mailtrap.io", 2525) as server:    server.login(login, password)    server.sendmail(        sender_email, receiver_email, bulletin.as_string()    ) print('Sent')        

Output:

Now the image is embedded into the HTML bulletin and is non bachelor as fastened file. Python has encoded our jpg image, and if we go to the HTML Source tab, we will see the long image information string in the img src.

How to transport multiple emails in Python

Sending multiple emails to different recipients and making them personal is the special thing about emails in Python.

To add several more recipients, you can just type their addresses in separated past a comma, add together CC and BCC. Merely if you piece of work with a bulk email sending, Python will save you with loops.

Ane of the options is to create a database in a .csv format (we presume information technology is saved to the aforementioned binder as your Python script).

We often see our names in transactional or fifty-fifty promotional examples. Here is how we can make it with Python.

Allow's organize the list in a simple table with just 2 columns: proper noun and email address. It should look like the following example:

          #name,email John Johnson,john@johnson.com Peter Peterson,peter@peterson.com        

The code beneath will open the file and loop over its rows line by line, replacing the {name} with the value from the "proper name" cavalcade.

Input:

          import csv, smtplib  port = 2525 smtp_server = "smtp.mailtrap.io" login = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your login generated by Mailtrap password = "1a2b3c4d5e6f7g" # paste your password generated by Mailtrap  bulletin = """Subject: Order confirmation To: {recipient} From: {sender}  How-do-you-do {name}, thank you for your gild! Nosotros are processing it at present and will contact you soon""" sender = "new@example.com"  with smtplib.SMTP("smtp.mailtrap.io", 2525) as server:     server.login(login, password)     with open("contacts.csv") as file:         reader = csv.reader(file)         next(reader)  # it skips the header row         for name, email in reader:             server.sendmail(                sender,                 email,                 message.format(proper noun=proper noun, recipient=email, sender=sender)             )             print(f'Sent to {name}')        

After running the script, we get the post-obit response:

          Sent to John Johnson Sent to Peter Peterson >>>                  

Output

In our Mailtrap inbox, we come across two letters: one for John Johnson and some other for Peter Peterson, delivered simultaneously:

Sending emails with Python via Gmail

When you are ready for sending emails to existent recipients, you lot can configure your production server. It also depends on your needs, goals, and preferences: your localhost or any external SMTP.

Ane of the well-nigh popular options is Gmail so let's take a closer look at it.

We can oftentimes see titles like "How to set up a Gmail account for development". In fact, information technology means that you will create a new Gmail account and will use it for a detail purpose.

To be able to send emails via your Gmail account, you need to provide access to information technology for your application. Y'all can Let less secure apps or take advantage of the OAuth2 authorization protocol. It's way more difficult but recommended due to security reasons.

Further, to utilise a Gmail server, yous demand to know:

• the server proper name = smtp.gmail.com
• port = 465 for SSL/TLS connection (preferred)
• or port = 587 for STARTTLS connectedness.
• username = your Gmail email address
• password = your password.

          import smtplib, ssl  port = 465 password = input("your password") context = ssl.create_default_context() with smtplib.SMTP_SSL("smtp.gmail.com", port, context=context) equally server:     server.login("my@gmail.com", password)        

If you tend to simplicity, then you lot tin can utilise Yagmail, the defended Gmail/SMTP. It makes email sending really easy. Just compare the above examples with these several lines of code:

          import yagmail yag = yagmail.SMTP() contents = [     "This is the body, and here is just text http://somedomain/paradigm.png",     "Y'all can detect an audio file attached.", '/local/path/to/song.mp3' ] yag.send('to@someone.com', 'bailiwick', contents)        

Transactional email services

Gmail is free and widely used but it still has limitations for electronic mail sending. If your needs become far beyond Gmail rules, choose from i of the transactional services options, or as they are also chosen email API services.

Python is supported past the vast majority of the trusted email APIs then you can cull according to your preferences and upkeep.

Here are some guides on sending emails with Python through the listing of the almost popular services:

• Amazon SES
• Mailgun
• Mandrill
• Postmark
• Sendgrid
• SocketLabs

Next steps with emails in Python

We have demonstrated just basic options of sending emails with Python, to describe the logic and a range of its capabilities. To become great results, nosotros recommend reviewing the Python documentation and just experimenting with your own code!

At that place are a agglomeration of various Python frameworks and libraries, which make creating apps more elegant and dedicated. In detail, some of them can help improve your experience with building emails sending functionality:

The nigh popular frameworks are:

1. Flask, which offers a simple interface for email sending— Flask Mail. (Bank check here how to send emails with Flask)
2. Django, which tin exist a great choice for building HTML templates. (And here is our tutorial on sending emails with Django).
3. Zope comes in handy for website development.
4. Marrow Mailer is a defended mail commitment framework adding diverse helpful configurations.
5. Plotly and its Dash can help with mailing graphs and reports.

As well, here is a handy list of Python resources sorted by their functionality.

Skillful luck and don't forget to stay on the rubber side when sending your emails!

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Source: https://mailtrap.io/blog/sending-emails-in-python-tutorial-with-code-examples/

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