How to send an email with Python

Question

This code works and sends me an email just fine     import smtplib  SERVER    localhost   FROM    monty python com   TO     jon mycompany com     must be a list  SUBJECT    Hello    TEXT    This message was sent with Python s smtplib      Prepare actual message  message        From   s To   s Subject   s   s        FROM       join TO   SUBJECT  TEXT     Send the mail  server   smtplib SMTP  myserver   server sendmail FROM  TO  message  server quit     However if I try to wrap it in a function like this   def sendMail FROM TO SUBJECT TEXT SERVER       import smtplib        this is some test documentation in the function        message                From   s         To   s         Subject   s          s                FROM       join TO   SUBJECT  TEXT        Send the mail     server   smtplib SMTP SERVER      server sendmail FROM  TO  message      server quit     and call it I get the following errors      Traceback  most recent call last     File  C  Python31 mailtest1 py   line 8  in  lt module gt      sendmail sendMail sender recipients subject body server    File  C  Python31 sendmail py   line 13  in sendMail     server sendmail FROM  TO  message    File  C  Python31 lib smtplib py   line 720  in sendmail     self rset     File  C  Python31 lib smtplib py   line 444  in rset     return self docmd  rset     File  C  Python31 lib smtplib py   line 368  in docmd     return self getreply     File  C  Python31 lib smtplib py   line 345  in getreply     raise SMTPServerDisconnected  Connection unexpectedly closed   smtplib SMTPServerDisconnected  Connection unexpectedly closed   Can anyone help me understand why

User · Answer

Here is an example on Python 3 x  much simpler than 2 x   import smtplib from email message import EmailMessage def send mail to email  subject  message  server  smtp example cn                 from email  xx example com          import smtplib     msg   EmailMessage       msg  Subject     subject     msg  From     from email     msg  To          join to email      msg set content message      print msg      server   smtplib SMTP server      server set debuglevel 1      server login from email   password      user  amp  password     server send message msg      server quit       print  successfully sent the mail      call this function   send mail to email   12345 qq com    12345 126 com              subject  hello   message  Your analysis has done      below may only for Chinese user   If you use 126 163        you need to set           like below     ref  https   stackoverflow com a 41470149 2803344 https   docs python org 3 library email examples html email-examples

User · Answer

There is indentation problem  The code below will work   import textwrap  def sendMail FROM TO SUBJECT TEXT SERVER       import smtplib        this is some test documentation in the function        message   textwrap dedent              From   s         To   s         Subject   s          s                FROM       join TO   SUBJECT  TEXT         Send the mail     server   smtplib SMTP SERVER      server sendmail FROM  TO  message      server quit

User · Answer

Make sure you have granted permission for both Sender and Receiver to send email and receive email from Unknown sources External Sources  in Email Account   import smtplib   Ports 465 and 587 are intended for email client to email server communication - sending email server   smtplib SMTP  smtp gmail com   587    starttls   is a way to take an existing insecure connection and upgrade it to a secure connection using SSL TLS  server starttls     Next  log in to the server server login   email     password    msg    Hello  This Message was sent by the help of Python    Send the mail server sendmail   Sender     Reciever   msg

User · Answer

Thought I d put in my two bits here since I have just figured out how this works    It appears that you don t have the port specified on your SERVER connection settings  this effected me a little bit when I was trying to connect to my SMTP server that isn t using the default port  25    According to the smtplib SMTP docs  your ehlo or helo request response should automatically be taken care of  so you shouldn t have to worry about this  but might be something to confirm if all else fails    Another thing to ask yourself is have you allowed SMTP connections on your SMTP server itself  For some sites like GMAIL and ZOHO you have to actually go in and activate the IMAP connections within the email account  Your mail server might not allow SMTP connections that don t come from  localhost  perhaps  Something to look into    The final thing is you might want to try and initiate the connection on TLS  Most servers now require this type of authentication   You ll see I ve jammed two TO fields into my email  The msg  TO   and msg  FROM   msg dictionary items allows the correct information to show up in the headers of the email itself  which one sees on the receiving end of the email in the To From fields  you might even be able to add a Reply To field in here  The TO and FROM fields themselves are what the server requires  I know I ve heard of some email servers rejecting emails if they don t have the proper email headers in place    This is the code I ve used  in a function  that works for me to email the content of a   txt file using my local computer and a remote SMTP server  ZOHO as shown     def emailResults folder  filename          body of the message     doc   folder   filename     txt      with open doc   r   as readText          msg   MIMEText readText read           headers     TO    to user domain com      msg  To     TO     FROM    from user domain com      msg  From     FROM     msg  Subject      email subject      filename        SMTP     send   smtplib SMTP  smtp zoho com   587      send starttls       send login  from user domain com    password       send sendmail FROM  TO  msg as string        send quit

User · Answer

While indenting your code in the function  which is ok   you did also indent the lines of the raw message string  But leading white space implies folding  concatenation  of the header lines  as described in sections 2 2 3 and 3 2 3 of RFC 2822 - Internet Message Format      Each header field is logically a single line of characters comprising   the field name  the colon  and the field body   For convenience   however  and to deal with the 998 78 character limitations per line    the field body portion of a header field can be split into a multiple   line representation  this is called  folding     In the function form of your sendmail call  all lines are starting with white space and so are  unfolded   concatenated  and you are trying to send  From  monty python com    To  jon mycompany com    Subject  Hello     This message was sent with Python s smtplib    Other than our mind suggests  smtplib will not understand the To  and Subject  headers any longer  because these names are only recognized at the beginning of a line  Instead smtplib will assume a very long sender email address    monty python com    To  jon mycompany com    Subject  Hello     This message was sent with Python s smtplib    This won t work and so comes your Exception   The solution is simple  Just preserve the message string as it was before   This can be done by a function  as Zeeshan suggested  or right away in the source code   import smtplib  def sendMail FROM TO SUBJECT TEXT SERVER          this is some test documentation in the function        message        From   s To   s Subject   s   s        FROM       join TO   SUBJECT  TEXT        Send the mail     server   smtplib SMTP SERVER      server sendmail FROM  TO  message      server quit     Now the unfolding does not occur and you send  From  monty python com To  jon mycompany com Subject  Hello   This message was sent with Python s smtplib    which is what works and what was done by your old code   Note that I was also preserving the empty line between headers and body to accommodate section 3 5 of the RFC  which is required  and put the include outside the function according to the Python style guide PEP-0008  which is optional

User · Answer

I recommend that you use the standard packages email and smtplib together to send email  Please look at the following example  reproduced from the Python documentation   Notice that if you follow this approach  the  simple  task is indeed simple  and the more complex tasks  like attaching binary objects or sending plain HTML multipart messages  are accomplished very rapidly     Import smtplib for the actual sending function import smtplib    Import the email modules we ll need from email mime text import MIMEText    Open a plain text file for reading   For this example  assume that   the text file contains only ASCII characters  with open textfile   rb   as fp        Create a text plain message     msg   MIMEText fp read       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 sending email to multiple destinations  you can also follow the example in the Python documentation     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    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          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      with open file   rb   as fp          img   MIMEImage fp read        msg attach img     Send the email via our own SMTP server  s   smtplib SMTP  localhost   s sendmail me  family  msg as string    s quit     As you can see  the header To in the MIMEText object must be a string consisting of email addresses separated by commas  On the other hand  the second argument to the sendmail function must be a list of strings  each string is an email address    So  if you have three email addresses  person1 example com  person2 example com  and person3 example com  you can do as follows  obvious sections omitted    to     person1 example com    person2 example com    person3 example com   msg  To         join to  s sendmail me  to  msg as string      the     join to  part makes a single string out of the list  separated by commas   From your questions I gather that you have not gone through the Python tutorial - it is a MUST if you want to get anywhere in Python - the documentation is mostly excellent for the standard library

User · Answer

It s probably putting tabs into your message  Print out message before you pass it to sendMail

User · Answer

As far your code is concerned  there doesn t seem to be anything fundamentally wrong with it except that  it is unclear how you re actually calling that function  All I can think of is that when your server is not responding then you will get this SMTPServerDisconnected error  If you lookup the getreply   function in smtplib  excerpt below   you will get an idea   def getreply self          Get a reply from the server       Returns a tuple consisting of         - server response code  e g   250   or such  if all goes well          Note  returns -1 if it can t read response code         - server response string corresponding to response code  multiline         responses are converted to a single  multiline string        Raises SMTPServerDisconnected if end-of-file is reached            check an example at https   github com rreddy80 sendEmails blob master sendEmailAttachments py that also uses a function call to send an email  if that s what you re trying to do  DRY approach

User · Answer

It s worth noting that the SMTP module supports the context manager so there is no need to manually call quit    this will guarantee it is always called even if there is an exception      with smtplib SMTP SSL  smtp gmail com   465  as server          server ehlo           server login user  password          server sendmail from  to  body

User · Answer

I d like to help you with sending emails by advising the yagmail package  I m the maintainer  sorry for the advertising  but I feel it can really help      The whole code for you would be   import yagmail yag   yagmail SMTP FROM   pass   yag send TO  SUBJECT  TEXT    Note that I provide defaults for all arguments  for example if you want to send to yourself  you can omit TO  if you don t want a subject  you can omit it also   Furthermore  the goal is also to make it really easy to attach html code or images  and other files    Where you put contents you can do something like   contents     Body text  and here is an embedded image     http   somedomain image png                You can also find an audio file attached      local path song mp3     Wow  how easy it is to send attachments  This would take like 20 lines without yagmail     Also  if you set it up once  you ll never have to enter the password again  and have it safely stored   In your case you can do something like   import yagmail yagmail SMTP   send contents   contents    which is much more concise   I d invite you to have a look at the github or install it directly with pip install yagmail

User · Answer

Well  you want to have an answer that is up-to-date and modern  Here is my answer  When I need to mail in Python  I use the mailgun API wich get s a lot of the headaches with sending mails sorted out  They have a wonderfull app api that allows you to send 5 000 free emails per month  Sending an email would be like this  def send simple message        return requests post           quot https   api mailgun net v3 YOUR DOMAIN NAME messages quot           auth   quot api quot    quot YOUR API KEY quot            data   quot from quot    quot Excited User  lt mailgun YOUR DOMAIN NAME gt  quot                  quot to quot     quot bar example com quot    quot YOU YOUR DOMAIN NAME quot                   quot subject quot    quot Hello quot                  quot text quot    quot Testing some Mailgun awesomness  quot     You can also track events and lots more  see the quickstart guide  I hope you find this useful

[python] How to send an email with Python?

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