18.6. mimetools — Tools for parsing MIME messages

Deprecated since version 2.3: The email package should be used in preference to the mimetools module. This module is present only to maintain backward compatibility, and it has been removed in 3.x.

This module defines a subclass of the rfc822 module’s Message class and a number of utility functions that are useful for the manipulation for MIME multipart or encoded message.

It defines the following items:

class mimetools.Message(fp[, seekable])

Return a new instance of the Message class. This is a subclass of the rfc822.Message class, with some additional methods (see below). The seekable argument has the same meaning as for rfc822.Message.

mimetools.choose_boundary()

Return a unique string that has a high likelihood of being usable as a part boundary. The string has the form 'hostipaddr.uid.pid.timestamp.random'.

mimetools.decode(input, output, encoding)

Read data encoded using the allowed MIME encoding from open file object input and write the decoded data to open file object output. Valid values for encoding include 'base64', 'quoted-printable', 'uuencode', 'x-uuencode', 'uue', 'x-uue', '7bit', and '8bit'. Decoding messages encoded in '7bit' or '8bit' has no effect. The input is simply copied to the output.

mimetools.encode(input, output, encoding)

Read data from open file object input and write it encoded using the allowed MIME encoding to open file object output. Valid values for encoding are the same as for decode().

mimetools.copyliteral(input, output)

Read lines from open file input until EOF and write them to open file output.

mimetools.copybinary(input, output)

Read blocks until EOF from open file input and write them to open file output. The block size is currently fixed at 8192.