Sending mail from Python using SMTP

Question

The script I use is quite similar; I post it here as an example of how to use the email.* modules to generate MIME messages; so this script can be easily modified to attach pictures, etc.

I rely on my ISP to add the date time header.

My ISP requires me to use a secure smtp connection to send mail, I rely on the smtplib module (downloadable at http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~db2501/ssmtplib.py)

As in your script, the username and password, (given dummy values below), used to authenticate on the SMTP server, are in plain text in the source. This is a security weakness; but the best alternative depends on how careful you need (want?) to be about protecting these.

=======================================

#! /usr/local/bin/python


SMTPserver = 'smtp.att.yahoo.com'
sender =     'me@my_email_domain.net'
destination = ['recipient@her_email_domain.com']

USERNAME = "USER_NAME_FOR_INTERNET_SERVICE_PROVIDER"
PASSWORD = "PASSWORD_INTERNET_SERVICE_PROVIDER"

# typical values for text_subtype are plain, html, xml
text_subtype = 'plain'


content="""\
Test message
"""

subject="Sent from Python"

import sys
import os
import re

from smtplib import SMTP_SSL as SMTP       # this invokes the secure SMTP protocol (port 465, uses SSL)
# from smtplib import SMTP                  # use this for standard SMTP protocol   (port 25, no encryption)

# old version
# from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

try:
    msg = MIMEText(content, text_subtype)
    msg['Subject']=       subject
    msg['From']   = sender # some SMTP servers will do this automatically, not all

    conn = SMTP(SMTPserver)
    conn.set_debuglevel(False)
    conn.login(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
    try:
        conn.sendmail(sender, destination, msg.as_string())
    finally:
        conn.quit()

except:
    sys.exit( "mail failed; %s" % "CUSTOM_ERROR" ) # give an error message

The method I commonly use...not much different but a little bit

import smtplib
from email.MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText

msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['From'] = '[email protected]'
msg['To'] = '[email protected]'
msg['Subject'] = 'simple email in python'
message = 'here is the email'
msg.attach(MIMEText(message))

mailserver = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com',587)
# identify ourselves to smtp gmail client
mailserver.ehlo()
# secure our email with tls encryption
mailserver.starttls()
# re-identify ourselves as an encrypted connection
mailserver.ehlo()
mailserver.login('[email protected]', 'mypassword')

mailserver.sendmail('[email protected]','[email protected]',msg.as_string())

mailserver.quit()

That's it

Also if you want to do smtp auth with TLS as opposed to SSL then you just have to change the port (use 587) and do smtp.starttls(). This worked for me:

...
smtp.connect('YOUR.MAIL.SERVER', 587)
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.starttls()
smtp.ehlo()
smtp.login('USERNAME@DOMAIN', 'PASSWORD')
...

Make sure you don't have any firewalls blocking SMTP. The first time I tried to send an email, it was blocked both by Windows Firewall and McAfee - took forever to find them both.