Email automation is a powerful feature in modern applications, enabling notifications, reports, user communication, and more. Python, with its robust standard library and third-party packages, makes it easy to send emails programmatically.
This post provides code snippets to send email through python, the python email package is used in the code example to send an email with python.
Prerequisites- Python 3 installed
- Access to an SMTP server (e.g., Gmail, Outlook, Mailtrap)
- Basic knowledge of Python programming
Note:- If you're using Gmail, you may need to enable “Less secure app access” or use App Passwords if two-factor authentication is enabled.
How to Send Email Using Python
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| Python Send Email |
Getting Started
The python email module(smtplib module) defines an SMTP client (called python SMTP client) session object that can be used to send mail to any Internet machine with an SMTP or ESMTP listener daemon.
This module is a native module (inbuild with python), it does not require to install an external library to send email through python.
Python Send Email
To send an email using Python, the built-in smtplib and email libraries are commonly used. Here's a simple example that sends an email via a SMTP server:
Send Mail With Plain Text
Here's a simple Python code to send a plain text email using the built-in smtplib and email libraries:
# Sending a emails without attachments using Python.
# importing the required library(python email module).
import smtplib
# email sender python
sender = 'sender_email_id'
# Sender password
password="sender_password"
#email receiver python
receivers = ['receiver_email_id']
# message to be sent
message = "Content to be sent"
# creates python smtp server object
email = smtplib.SMTP('python smtp email:smtp_host_name', Port_Number)
# smtp login python
email.login(sender, password)
# python send email smtp
email.sendmail(sender, receivers, message)
# terminating the session
email.quit()
Send Mail with HTML
Python Code import smtplib
from email.message import EmailMessage
# Email details
sender = 'your_email@example.com'
recipient = 'recipient@example.com'
subject = 'Test Email from Python'
body = 'Hello, this is a test email sent from Python!'
# Compose the email
msg = EmailMessage()
msg['From'] = sender
msg['To'] = recipient
msg['Subject'] = subject
msg.set_content(body)
msg.add_alternative("""
<html>
<body>
<h1 style="color:blue;">Welcome!</h1>
<p>This is an <b>HTML email</b> sent from <i>Python</i>.</p>
</body>
</html>
""", subtype='html')
# Send the email using SMTP
with smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587) as server:
server.starttls()
server.login(sender, 'your_email_password')
server.send_message(msg)
print("Email sent successfully!")
Send Mail with Attachment
To send email via python with attachment, along with the smtplib library the following libraries need to be imported.
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.mime.base import MIMEBase
from email import encoders
The following code constain the python script to send email with attachment. The code contains the steps how to read the attachment from local computer and attachech it with mail body.
Python Code # python send email with attachment
# importing the required library(python email module).
import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.mime.base import MIMEBase
from email import encoders
# email sender python
sender = 'sender_email_id'
# Sender password
password="sender_password"
#email receiver python
receivers = ['receiver_email_id']
# MIMEMultipart
_Mail = MIMEMultipart()
# senders email address
_Mail['From'] = sender
# receivers email address
_Mail['To'] = receivers
# the subject of mail
_Mail['Subject'] = "subject_of_the_mail"
filename = "Path of file (file_name_with_extension)"
# the body of the mail
body = "body_of_the_mail"
#The body and the attachments for the mail
_Mail.attach(MIMEText(body, 'plain'))
# Open the file as binary mode with readonly
# rb is a flag for readonly
attachment = open(filename, "rb")
# MIMEBase
payload = MIMEBase('application', 'octet-stream')
# To change the payload into encoded form
payload .set_payload((attachment).read())
# encode into base64
encoders.encode_base64(payload )
#add payload header with filename
payload .add_header('Content-Disposition', "attachment; filename= %s" % filename)
# attach the instance 'p' to instance '_Mail'
_Mail.attach(payload )
#python smtp client
# creates python smtp client object
email = smtplib.SMTP('email_host_name', email_port_number)
#enable security
email.starttls()
# smtp login python
email.login(fromaddr, password)
# Converts the Multipart _Mail into a string
message = _Mail.as_string()
# python send email smtp
email.sendmail(sender, receivers, message)
# terminating the session
email.quit()
In the above code, the MIME objects are created in order to store the sender and receiver information and some other details(subject, body of mail). MIME is also needed to set the attachment with the mail.
Send Mail from Python Example
The following example contains python code to send mail from python using gmail SMTP server with attachment.
Python Code # python send email with attachment
# importing the required library(python email module).
import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.mime.base import MIMEBase
from email import encoders
# email sender python
sender = 'kailashsblogs@gmail.com'
# Sender password
password="###########"
#email receiver python
receivers = ['kailashsblogs@hotmail.com']
# MIMEMultipart
_Mail = MIMEMultipart()
# senders email address
_Mail['From'] = sender
# receivers email address
_Mail['To'] = receivers
# the subject of mail
_Mail['Subject'] = "python send email test"
# the body of the mail
body = "Test Python Gmail Send Email"
#The body and the attachments for the mail
_Mail.attach(MIMEText(body, 'plain'))
filename = "D:\document\testfile.txt"
# Open the file as binary mode with readonly
# rb is a flag for readonly
attachment = open(filename, "rb")
# MIMEBase
payload = MIMEBase('application', 'octet-stream')
# To change the payload into encoded form
payload .set_payload((attachment).read())
# encode into base64
encoders.encode_base64(payload )
#add payload header with filename
payload .add_header('Content-Disposition', "attachment; filename= %s" % filename)
# attach the instance 'p' to instance '_Mail'
_Mail.attach(payload )
#python smtp gmail
email = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587)
#enable security
email.starttls()
# smtp login python
email.login(fromaddr, password)
# Converts the Multipart _Mail into a string
message = _Mail.as_string()
# python send email gmail
email.sendmail(sender, receivers, message)
# terminating the session
email.quit()
Summary
Python makes email automation easy with just a few lines of code. Whether you're sending simple alerts or styled reports with attachments, the smtplib and email libraries cover most use cases.
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