21.17.1. SMTP Objects

An SMTP instance has the following methods:

SMTP.set_debuglevel(level)

Set the debug output level. A true value for level results in debug messages for connection and for all messages sent to and received from the server.

SMTP.docmd(cmd, args='')

Send a command cmd to the server. The optional argument args is simply concatenated to the command, separated by a space.

This returns a 2-tuple composed of a numeric response code and the actual response line (multiline responses are joined into one long line.)

In normal operation it should not be necessary to call this method explicitly. It is used to implement other methods and may be useful for testing private extensions.

If the connection to the server is lost while waiting for the reply, SMTPServerDisconnected will be raised.

SMTP.connect(host='localhost', port=0)

Connect to a host on a given port. The defaults are to connect to the local host at the standard SMTP port (25). If the hostname ends with a colon (':') followed by a number, that suffix will be stripped off and the number interpreted as the port number to use. This method is automatically invoked by the constructor if a host is specified during instantiation. Returns a 2-tuple of the response code and message sent by the server in its connection response.

SMTP.helo(name='')

Identify yourself to the SMTP server using HELO. The hostname argument defaults to the fully qualified domain name of the local host. The message returned by the server is stored as the helo_resp attribute of the object.

In normal operation it should not be necessary to call this method explicitly. It will be implicitly called by the sendmail() when necessary.

SMTP.ehlo(name='')

Identify yourself to an ESMTP server using EHLO. The hostname argument defaults to the fully qualified domain name of the local host. Examine the response for ESMTP option and store them for use by has_extn(). Also sets several informational attributes: the message returned by the server is stored as the ehlo_resp attribute, does_esmtp is set to true or false depending on whether the server supports ESMTP, and esmtp_features will be a dictionary containing the names of the SMTP service extensions this server supports, and their parameters (if any).

Unless you wish to use has_extn() before sending mail, it should not be necessary to call this method explicitly. It will be implicitly called by sendmail() when necessary.

SMTP.ehlo_or_helo_if_needed()

This method call ehlo() and or helo() if there has been no previous EHLO or HELO command this session. It tries ESMTP EHLO first.

SMTPHeloError

The server didn’t reply properly to the HELO greeting.

SMTP.has_extn(name)

Return True if name is in the set of SMTP service extensions returned by the server, False otherwise. Case is ignored.

SMTP.verify(address)

Check the validity of an address on this server using SMTP VRFY. Returns a tuple consisting of code 250 and a full RFC 822 address (including human name) if the user address is valid. Otherwise returns an SMTP error code of 400 or greater and an error string.

Note

Many sites disable SMTP VRFY in order to foil spammers.

SMTP.login(user, password)

Log in on an SMTP server that requires authentication. The arguments are the username and the password to authenticate with. If there has been no previous EHLO or HELO command this session, this method tries ESMTP EHLO first. This method will return normally if the authentication was successful, or may raise the following exceptions:

SMTPHeloError

The server didn’t reply properly to the HELO greeting.

SMTPAuthenticationError

The server didn’t accept the username/password combination.

SMTPException

No suitable authentication method was found.

SMTP.starttls(keyfile=None, certfile=None, context=None)

Put the SMTP connection in TLS (Transport Layer Security) mode. All SMTP commands that follow will be encrypted. You should then call ehlo() again.

If keyfile and certfile are provided, these are passed to the socket module’s ssl() function.

Optional context parameter is a ssl.SSLContext object; This is an alternative to using a keyfile and a certfile and if specified both keyfile and certfile should be None.

If there has been no previous EHLO or HELO command this session, this method tries ESMTP EHLO first.

SMTPHeloError

The server didn’t reply properly to the HELO greeting.

SMTPException

The server does not support the STARTTLS extension.

RuntimeError

SSL/TLS support is not available to your Python interpreter.

Changed in version 3.3: context was added.

SMTP.sendmail(from_addr, to_addrs, msg, mail_options=[], rcpt_options=[])

Send mail. The required arguments are an RFC 822 from-address string, a list of RFC 822 to-address strings (a bare string will be treated as a list with 1 address), and a message string. The caller may pass a list of ESMTP options (such as 8bitmime) to be used in MAIL FROM commands as mail_options. ESMTP options (such as DSN commands) that should be used with all RCPT commands can be passed as rcpt_options. (If you need to use different ESMTP options to different recipients you have to use the low-level methods such as mail(), rcpt() and data() to send the message.)

Note

The from_addr and to_addrs parameters are used to construct the message envelope used by the transport agents. sendmail does not modify the message headers in any way.

msg may be a string containing characters in the ASCII range, or a byte string. A string is encoded to bytes using the ascii codec, and lone \r and \n characters are converted to \r\n characters. A byte string is not modified.

If there has been no previous EHLO or HELO command this session, this method tries ESMTP EHLO first. If the server does ESMTP, message size and each of the specified options will be passed to it (if the option is in the feature set the server advertises). If EHLO fails, HELO will be tried and ESMTP options suppressed.

This method will return normally if the mail is accepted for at least one recipient. Otherwise it will raise an exception. That is, if this method does not raise an exception, then someone should get your mail. If this method does not raise an exception, it returns a dictionary, with one entry for each recipient that was refused. Each entry contains a tuple of the SMTP error code and the accompanying error message sent by the server.

This method may raise the following exceptions:

SMTPRecipientsRefused

All recipients were refused. Nobody got the mail. The recipients attribute of the exception object is a dictionary with information about the refused recipients (like the one returned when at least one recipient was accepted).

SMTPHeloError

The server didn’t reply properly to the HELO greeting.

SMTPSenderRefused

The server didn’t accept the from_addr.

SMTPDataError

The server replied with an unexpected error code (other than a refusal of a recipient).

Unless otherwise noted, the connection will be open even after an exception is raised.

Changed in version 3.2: msg may be a byte string.

SMTP.send_message(msg, from_addr=None, to_addrs=None, mail_options=[], rcpt_options=[])

This is a convenience method for calling sendmail() with the message represented by an email.message.Message object. The arguments have the same meaning as for sendmail(), except that msg is a Message object.

If from_addr is None or to_addrs is None, send_message fills those arguments with addresses extracted from the headers of msg as specified in RFC 2822: from_addr is set to the Sender field if it is present, and otherwise to the From field. to_adresses combines the values (if any) of the To, Cc, and Bcc fields from msg. If exactly one set of Resent-* headers appear in the message, the regular headers are ignored and the Resent-* headers are used instead. If the message contains more than one set of Resent-* headers, a ValueError is raised, since there is no way to unambiguously detect the most recent set of Resent- headers.

send_message serializes msg using BytesGenerator with \r\n as the linesep, and calls sendmail() to transmit the resulting message. Regardless of the values of from_addr and to_addrs, send_message does not transmit any Bcc or Resent-Bcc headers that may appear in msg.

New in version 3.2.

SMTP.quit()

Terminate the SMTP session and close the connection. Return the result of the SMTP QUIT command.

Low-level methods corresponding to the standard SMTP/ESMTP commands HELP, RSET, NOOP, MAIL, RCPT, and DATA are also supported. Normally these do not need to be called directly, so they are not documented here. For details, consult the module code.

21.17.2. SMTP Example

This example prompts the user for addresses needed in the message envelope (‘To’ and ‘From’ addresses), and the message to be delivered. Note that the headers to be included with the message must be included in the message as entered; this example doesn’t do any processing of the RFC 822 headers. In particular, the ‘To’ and ‘From’ addresses must be included in the message headers explicitly.

import smtplib

def prompt(prompt):
    return input(prompt).strip()

fromaddr = prompt("From: ")
toaddrs  = prompt("To: ").split()
print("Enter message, end with ^D (Unix) or ^Z (Windows):")

# Add the From: and To: headers at the start!
msg = ("From: %s\r\nTo: %s\r\n\r\n"
       % (fromaddr, ", ".join(toaddrs)))
while True:
    try:
        line = input()
    except EOFError:
        break
    if not line:
        break
    msg = msg + line

print("Message length is", len(msg))

server = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
server.set_debuglevel(1)
server.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddrs, msg)
server.quit()