"email": Examples
*****************

Here are a few examples of how to use the "email" package to read,
write, and send simple email messages, as well as more complex MIME
messages.

First, let's see how to create and send a simple text message (both
the text content and the addresses may contain unicode characters):

   # Import smtplib for the actual sending function
   import smtplib

   # Import the email modules we'll need
   from email.message import EmailMessage

   # Open the plain text file whose name is in textfile for reading.
   with open(textfile) as fp:
       # Create a text/plain message
       msg = EmailMessage()
       msg.set_content(fp.read())

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

   # Send the message via our own SMTP server.
   s = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
   s.send_message(msg)
   s.quit()

Parsing **RFC 822** headers can easily be done by the using the
classes from the "parser" module:

   # Import the email modules we'll need
   from email.parser import BytesParser, Parser
   from email.policy import default

   # If the e-mail headers are in a file, uncomment these two lines:
   # with open(messagefile, 'rb') as fp:
   #     headers = BytesParser(policy=default).parse(fp)

   #  Or for parsing headers in a string (this is an uncommon operation), use:
   headers = Parser(policy=default).parsestr(
           'From: Foo Bar <user@example.com>\n'
           'To: <someone_else@example.com>\n'
           'Subject: Test message\n'
           '\n'
           'Body would go here\n')

   #  Now the header items can be accessed as a dictionary:
   print('To: {}'.format(headers['to']))
   print('From: {}'.format(headers['from']))
   print('Subject: {}'.format(headers['subject']))

   # You can also access the parts of the addresses:
   print('Recipient username: {}'.format(headers['to'].addresses[0].username))
   print('Sender name: {}'.format(headers['from'].addresses[0].display_name))

Here's an example of how to send a MIME message containing a bunch of
family pictures that may be residing in a directory:

   # Import smtplib for the actual sending function
   import smtplib

   # And imghdr to find the types of our images
   import imghdr

   # Here are the email package modules we'll need
   from email.message import EmailMessage

   # Create the container email message.
   msg = EmailMessage()
   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 = 'You will not see this in a MIME-aware mail reader.\n'

   # Open the files in binary mode.  Use imghdr to figure out the
   # MIME subtype for each specific image.
   for file in pngfiles:
       with open(file, 'rb') as fp:
           img_data = fp.read()
       msg.add_attachment(img_data, maintype='image',
                                    subtype=imghdr.what(None, img_data))

   # Send the email via our own SMTP server.
   with smtplib.SMTP('localhost') as s:
       s.send_message(msg)

Here's an example of how to send the entire contents of a directory as
an email message: [1]

   #!/usr/bin/env python3

   """Send the contents of a directory as a MIME message."""

   import os
   import smtplib
   # For guessing MIME type based on file name extension
   import mimetypes

   from argparse import ArgumentParser

   from email.message import EmailMessage
   from email.policy import SMTP


   def main():
       parser = ArgumentParser(description="""\
   Send the contents of a directory as a MIME message.
   Unless the -o option is given, the email is sent by forwarding to your local
   SMTP server, which then does the normal delivery process.  Your local machine
   must be running an SMTP server.
   """)
       parser.add_argument('-d', '--directory',
                           help="""Mail the contents of the specified directory,
                           otherwise use the current directory.  Only the regular
                           files in the directory are sent, and we don't recurse to
                           subdirectories.""")
       parser.add_argument('-o', '--output',
                           metavar='FILE',
                           help="""Print the composed message to FILE instead of
                           sending the message to the SMTP server.""")
       parser.add_argument('-s', '--sender', required=True,
                           help='The value of the From: header (required)')
       parser.add_argument('-r', '--recipient', required=True,
                           action='append', metavar='RECIPIENT',
                           default=[], dest='recipients',
                           help='A To: header value (at least one required)')
       args = parser.parse_args()
       directory = args.directory
       if not directory:
           directory = '.'
       # Create the message
       msg = EmailMessage()
       msg['Subject'] = f'Contents of directory {os.path.abspath(directory)}'
       msg['To'] = ', '.join(args.recipients)
       msg['From'] = args.sender
       msg.preamble = 'You will not see this in a MIME-aware mail reader.\n'

       for filename in os.listdir(directory):
           path = os.path.join(directory, filename)
           if not os.path.isfile(path):
               continue
           # Guess the content type based on the file's extension.  Encoding
           # will be ignored, although we should check for simple things like
           # gzip'd or compressed files.
           ctype, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(path)
           if ctype is None or encoding is not None:
               # No guess could be made, or the file is encoded (compressed), so
               # use a generic bag-of-bits type.
               ctype = 'application/octet-stream'
           maintype, subtype = ctype.split('/', 1)
           with open(path, 'rb') as fp:
               msg.add_attachment(fp.read(),
                                  maintype=maintype,
                                  subtype=subtype,
                                  filename=filename)
       # Now send or store the message
       if args.output:
           with open(args.output, 'wb') as fp:
               fp.write(msg.as_bytes(policy=SMTP))
       else:
           with smtplib.SMTP('localhost') as s:
               s.send_message(msg)


   if __name__ == '__main__':
       main()

Here's an example of how to unpack a MIME message like the one above,
into a directory of files:

   #!/usr/bin/env python3

   """Unpack a MIME message into a directory of files."""

   import os
   import email
   import mimetypes

   from email.policy import default

   from argparse import ArgumentParser


   def main():
       parser = ArgumentParser(description="""\
   Unpack a MIME message into a directory of files.
   """)
       parser.add_argument('-d', '--directory', required=True,
                           help="""Unpack the MIME message into the named
                           directory, which will be created if it doesn't already
                           exist.""")
       parser.add_argument('msgfile')
       args = parser.parse_args()

       with open(args.msgfile, 'rb') as fp:
           msg = email.message_from_binary_file(fp, policy=default)

       try:
           os.mkdir(args.directory)
       except FileExistsError:
           pass

       counter = 1
       for part in msg.walk():
           # multipart/* are just containers
           if part.get_content_maintype() == 'multipart':
               continue
           # Applications should really sanitize the given filename so that an
           # email message can't be used to overwrite important files
           filename = part.get_filename()
           if not filename:
               ext = mimetypes.guess_extension(part.get_content_type())
               if not ext:
                   # Use a generic bag-of-bits extension
                   ext = '.bin'
               filename = f'part-{counter:03d}{ext}'
           counter += 1
           with open(os.path.join(args.directory, filename), 'wb') as fp:
               fp.write(part.get_payload(decode=True))


   if __name__ == '__main__':
       main()

Here's an example of how to create an HTML message with an alternative
plain text version.  To make things a bit more interesting, we include
a related image in the html part, and we save a copy of what we are
going to send to disk, as well as sending it.

   #!/usr/bin/env python3

   import smtplib

   from email.message import EmailMessage
   from email.headerregistry import Address
   from email.utils import make_msgid

   # Create the base text message.
   msg = EmailMessage()
   msg['Subject'] = "Ayons asperges pour le déjeuner"
   msg['From'] = Address("Pepé Le Pew", "pepe", "example.com")
   msg['To'] = (Address("Penelope Pussycat", "penelope", "example.com"),
                Address("Fabrette Pussycat", "fabrette", "example.com"))
   msg.set_content("""\
   Salut!

   Cela ressemble à un excellent recipie[1] déjeuner.

   [1] http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Roasted-Asparagus-Epicurious-203718

   --Pepé
   """)

   # Add the html version.  This converts the message into a multipart/alternative
   # container, with the original text message as the first part and the new html
   # message as the second part.
   asparagus_cid = make_msgid()
   msg.add_alternative("""\
   <html>
     <head></head>
     <body>
       <p>Salut!</p>
       <p>Cela ressemble à un excellent
           <a href="http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Roasted-Asparagus-Epicurious-203718">
               recipie
           </a> déjeuner.
       </p>
       <img src="cid:{asparagus_cid}" />
     </body>
   </html>
   """.format(asparagus_cid=asparagus_cid[1:-1]), subtype='html')
   # note that we needed to peel the <> off the msgid for use in the html.

   # Now add the related image to the html part.
   with open("roasted-asparagus.jpg", 'rb') as img:
       msg.get_payload()[1].add_related(img.read(), 'image', 'jpeg',
                                        cid=asparagus_cid)

   # Make a local copy of what we are going to send.
   with open('outgoing.msg', 'wb') as f:
       f.write(bytes(msg))

   # Send the message via local SMTP server.
   with smtplib.SMTP('localhost') as s:
       s.send_message(msg)

If we were sent the message from the last example, here is one way we
could process it:

   import os
   import sys
   import tempfile
   import mimetypes
   import webbrowser

   # Import the email modules we'll need
   from email import policy
   from email.parser import BytesParser

   # An imaginary module that would make this work and be safe.
   from imaginary import magic_html_parser

   # In a real program you'd get the filename from the arguments.
   with open('outgoing.msg', 'rb') as fp:
       msg = BytesParser(policy=policy.default).parse(fp)

   # Now the header items can be accessed as a dictionary, and any non-ASCII will
   # be converted to unicode:
   print('To:', msg['to'])
   print('From:', msg['from'])
   print('Subject:', msg['subject'])

   # If we want to print a preview of the message content, we can extract whatever
   # the least formatted payload is and print the first three lines.  Of course,
   # if the message has no plain text part printing the first three lines of html
   # is probably useless, but this is just a conceptual example.
   simplest = msg.get_body(preferencelist=('plain', 'html'))
   print()
   print(''.join(simplest.get_content().splitlines(keepends=True)[:3]))

   ans = input("View full message?")
   if ans.lower()[0] == 'n':
       sys.exit()

   # We can extract the richest alternative in order to display it:
   richest = msg.get_body()
   partfiles = {}
   if richest['content-type'].maintype == 'text':
       if richest['content-type'].subtype == 'plain':
           for line in richest.get_content().splitlines():
               print(line)
           sys.exit()
       elif richest['content-type'].subtype == 'html':
           body = richest
       else:
           print("Don't know how to display {}".format(richest.get_content_type()))
           sys.exit()
   elif richest['content-type'].content_type == 'multipart/related':
       body = richest.get_body(preferencelist=('html'))
       for part in richest.iter_attachments():
           fn = part.get_filename()
           if fn:
               extension = os.path.splitext(part.get_filename())[1]
           else:
               extension = mimetypes.guess_extension(part.get_content_type())
           with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix=extension, delete=False) as f:
               f.write(part.get_content())
               # again strip the <> to go from email form of cid to html form.
               partfiles[part['content-id'][1:-1]] = f.name
   else:
       print("Don't know how to display {}".format(richest.get_content_type()))
       sys.exit()
   with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(mode='w', delete=False) as f:
       # The magic_html_parser has to rewrite the href="cid:...." attributes to
       # point to the filenames in partfiles.  It also has to do a safety-sanitize
       # of the html.  It could be written using html.parser.
       f.write(magic_html_parser(body.get_content(), partfiles))
   webbrowser.open(f.name)
   os.remove(f.name)
   for fn in partfiles.values():
       os.remove(fn)

   # Of course, there are lots of email messages that could break this simple
   # minded program, but it will handle the most common ones.

Up to the prompt, the output from the above is:

   To: Penelope Pussycat <penelope@example.com>, Fabrette Pussycat <fabrette@example.com>
   From: Pepé Le Pew <pepe@example.com>
   Subject: Ayons asperges pour le déjeuner

   Salut!

   Cela ressemble à un excellent recipie[1] déjeuner.

-[ Footnotes ]-

[1] Thanks to Matthew Dixon Cowles for the original inspiration and
    examples.