Sending an email from python using smtpd.DebuggingServer as STMP server

Question

I'm trying to send an email using Python and used the following code:

import smtplib
import datetime

SERVER = "localhost"
PORT = 1025

FROM = "[email protected]"
TO = ["[email protected]"]

SUBJECT = "test"

dt = datetime.datetime.now()
TEXT = "blabla bla @ " + str(dt)

message = """\
From: %s
To: %s
Subject: %s

%s
""" % (FROM, ",".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)

server = smtplib.SMTP(SERVER, PORT)
server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
server.quit()

Not having any STMP server already installed/setup, I simply used this:

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

The code seems to run fine, no errors, and the server even notifies me with this:

---------- MESSAGE FOLLOWS ----------
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: test
X-Peer: 127.0.0.1

blabla bla @ 2014-01-29 14:44:37.219724
------------ END MESSAGE ------------

'[email protected]' is, of course, a representation of a real, existing email address while '[email protected]' is made up.

But no email arrives at [email protected]...

Am I missing something obvious here?

I read somewhere (sorry but cannot find it anymore) that services likes gmail may well block emails coming from non-static IP addresses. Could that be what is going on here?

Answer 1

According to python documentation on the smtpd module:

class smtpd.DebuggingServer(localaddr, remoteaddr)
    Create a new debugging server. Arguments are as per SMTPServer. 
    Messages will be discarded, and printed on stdout.

So the module doesn't actually send an email. It prints it in the terminal.