Email

Snippets about email.

sending email with python

I recommend that you use the standard packages email and smtplib together:

# Import smtplib for the actual sending function
import smtplib

# Import the email modules we'll need
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# Create a text/plain message
msg = MIMEText(body)

# me == the sender's email address
# you == the recipient's email address
msg['Subject'] = 'The contents of %s' % textfile
msg['From'] = me
msg['To'] = you

# Send the message via our own SMTP server, but don't include the
# envelope header.
s = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
s.sendmail(me, [you], msg.as_string())
s.quit()

For multiple destinations:

# Import smtplib for the actual sending function
import smtplib

# Here are the email package modules we'll need
from email.mime.image import MIMEImage
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart

COMMASPACE = ', '

# Create the container (outer) email message.
msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['Subject'] = 'Our family reunion'
# me == the sender's email address
# family = the list of all recipients' email addresses
msg['From'] = me
msg['To'] = COMMASPACE.join(family)
msg.preamble = 'Our family reunion'

# Assume we know that the image files are all in PNG format
for file in pngfiles:
    # Open the files in binary mode.  Let the MIMEImage class automatically
    # guess the specific image type.
    fp = open(file, 'rb')
    img = MIMEImage(fp.read())
    fp.close()
    msg.attach(img)

# Send the email via our own SMTP server.
s = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
s.sendmail(me, family, msg.as_string())
s.quit()

sending mail via sendmail from python

If I want to send mail not via SMTP, but rather via sendmail:

from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

msg = MIMEText("Here is the body of my message")
msg["From"] = "me@example.com"
msg["To"] = "you@example.com"
msg["Subject"] = "This is the subject."
p = Popen(["/usr/sbin/sendmail", "-t"], stdin=PIPE)
p.communicate(msg.as_string())