On this fast tip, excerpted from Helpful Python, Stuart exhibits you the way you should use Python to ship emails through Gmail. This may be helpful for sending standing experiences and summaries of actions, for instance.
When writing scripts for our personal use, it’s helpful to have the ability to ship emails from them. For instance, if we construct a script that’s run as a scheduled activity regularly, having it e-mail a abstract report back to us after it’s run could be a good technique to test that the script did what it was imagined to, and in addition to see what it discovered. One thing that often downloads knowledge from an HTTP API after which processes it may possibly e-mail us an outline of what it discovered, in order that we will go and skim its outcomes.
For particulars on establishing scheduled duties, see the Home windows, macOS, or Linux cron documentation.
There are lots of programmatic e-mail companies, reminiscent of SendGrid, Mandrill, and Mailgun. These are helpful if we’re producing lots of e-mail. They’ve official APIs and paid plans, and if we’re establishing a large-scale operation, it’s actually price wanting into signing as much as one among these companies and utilizing their Python libraries to ship e-mail. However for one thing small or private, this will appear to be lots of effort, and there’s an alternate if we now have a Gmail account (as many individuals do).
There’s an official Google Gmail Python API and module, but it surely’s fairly annoying to arrange and use. Python comes with the smtplib and e-mail modules as a part of the built-in library, and these are completely able to sending e-mail through Gmail after a little bit setup. We are able to even use them to ship e-mail from ourself to ourself. We are able to’t ship too many emails this manner, although. If we wish to ship tens or lots of of emails to many various recipients, it’s greatest to analyze the programmatic e-mail companies talked about above. However as an e-mail notification after a scheduled activity, utilizing Gmail from Python might be the perfect private resolution.
To make use of our Gmail account to ship e-mail this manner, we first need to arrange an app password for our Python script to make use of. Go to the App passwords of your Google account, and beneath Choose app, select Mail, and beneath Choose machine select Different (customized identify) and fill in a reputation (reminiscent of “My Python Script”). We’ll be proven a display that lists our new app password. Make an observation of this password someplace.
To ship an e-mail, we’ll use the smtplib module. First, we have to outline the content material of our e-mail. This half is our job. It’s a Python string, so we will substitute values in, use a templating language, or construct it up from a listing; no matter’s handy. Right here, we’ll use a easy instance:
email_text = f"""
Hello! That is the report from our script.
We've got added 1 + 2 and gotten the reply {1+2}.
Bye!
"""
We’ll additionally outline two variables to carry our Gmail account particulars: the account identify (which is the a part of our Gmail deal with earlier than @gmail.com) and the app password we simply created:
GMAIL_USERNAME = "mygmailaccount12345"
GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD = "yxyloqscucpxdsxq"
Subsequent, we’ll create the message as an object utilizing the e-mail module. An e-mail can have many various properties, however the vital ones right here (along with the textual content of the physique) are To, From, and Topic. From can be set to our Gmail deal with, which we’ve already outlined, and To must be a string containing the e-mail deal with the e-mail is being despatched to. This may be our personal deal with, and if the e-mail goes to multiple individual, we have to separate the addresses by commas. We’ll outline these in a listing, as a result of we’ll want the listing later:
recipients = ["sil@kryogenix.org"]
msg = MIMEText(email_text)
msg["Subject"] = "E-mail report: a easy sum"
msg["To"] = ", ".be part of(recipients)
msg["From"] = f"{GMAIL_USERNAME}@gmail.com"
Lastly, we’ll use smtplib to connect with Gmail’s mail server, log in with our supplied particulars, and ship the e-mail. SMTP is the underlying protocol that’s used to ship e-mail. After we ship an e-mail from our regular e-mail app, SMTP is how the app truly does that. Right here, we’re doing it immediately from our personal code:
smtp_server = smtplib.SMTP_SSL('smtp.gmail.com', 465)
smtp_server.login(GMAIL_USERNAME, GMAIL_APP_PASSWORD)
smtp_server.sendmail(msg["From"], recipients, msg.as_string())
smtp_server.stop()
Our e-mail ought to now be despatched. Bear in mind, after all, that that is an introduction, so we’ve achieved no error dealing with or enter validation. As talked about, if we’re sending a number of e-mail, we must always think about using a devoted service, and we must always take into consideration the necessity to deal with errors, failures to ship, and the like. However sending one alert e-mail to ourself, for instance, might be achieved usefully with easy code like this.
This fast tip is an excerpt from Helpful Python, out there on SitePoint Premium and from e book retailers.
