How to attach CSV file with MIME/SMTP and email?

Question

I’m attempting to attach a CSV file and email it.

Currently, I am doing the following but it simply attaches an empty CSV file, rather than attaching the CSV file I have in the same directory:

import smtplib

from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.base import MIMEBase
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.utils import COMMASPACE
from email import encoders


def email_attachment():
    SUBJECT = 'Subject string'

    msg = MIMEMultipart()
    msg['From'] = '[email protected]'
    msg['To'] = COMMASPACE.join(['[email protected]'])
    msg['Subject'] = SUBJECT

    part = MIMEBase('application', "octet-stream")
    #    I have a CSV file named `attachthisfile.csv` in the same directory that I'd like to attach and email
    part.set_payload(open("./attachthisfile.csv", "rb").read())
    encoders.encode_base64(part)

    part.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment', filename='attachthisfile.csv')

    msg.attach(part)

    smtpObj = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.mail.yahoo.com', 587)
    smtpObj.ehlo()
    smtpObj.starttls()
    smtpObj.login('[email protected]', 'myemailpassword')
    smtpObj.sendmail('[email protected]', '[email protected]', msg.as_string())

    smtpObj.quit()

So my question is, what could I be doing wrong? How can I attach the CSV file in the same directory and email, rather than creating an empty CSV file and naming it the same, and emailing?

Answer 1

The issue seems to be with this line:

part.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename=“attachthisfile.csv"')

It contains a Non-ASCII character '\xe2' after filename=. It's the old ascii encoding problem, in this case it's: “ vs "

As a side note, you can also change the add_header arguments to match this Python docs example:

part.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment', filename='attachthisfile.csv')

Full working example:

import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.base import MIMEBase
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.utils import COMMASPACE
from email import encoders

SUBJECT = 'Subject string'
FILENAME = 'attachthisfile.csv'
FILEPATH = './attachthisfile.csv'
MY_EMAIL = '[email protected]'
MY_PASSWORD = '********************'
TO_EMAIL = '[email protected]'
SMTP_SERVER = 'smtp.mail.yahoo.com'
SMTP_PORT = 587

msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['From'] = MY_EMAIL
msg['To'] = COMMASPACE.join([TO_EMAIL])
msg['Subject'] = SUBJECT

part = MIMEBase('application', "octet-stream")
part.set_payload(open(FILEPATH, "rb").read())
encoders.encode_base64(part)
part.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment', filename=FILENAME)  # or
# part.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="attachthisfile.csv"')
msg.attach(part)

smtpObj = smtplib.SMTP(SMTP_SERVER, SMTP_PORT)
smtpObj.ehlo()
smtpObj.starttls()
smtpObj.login(MY_EMAIL, MY_PASSWORD)
smtpObj.sendmail(MY_EMAIL, TO_EMAIL, msg.as_string())
smtpObj.quit()

Edit: Added full example