ezmail

easily send out emails via python or the cli using python's SMTP module.

Getting started

download the package using pip: pip install ezmail

.env file

This module uses environment files to handle sensitive info. Make sure the following values are defined in it:

USERNAME=sender@exmaple.com
PASSWORD=<password>
SMTP=<provider's SMTP server>
PORT=<provider's port>

See examples below for popular providers.

send from python

from ezmail import send_mail

# by default, an env file named `.env` is searched.
send_mail(
  subject="Email sent with Python",
  recipients=["r1@example.com", "John Doe <john@example.com>"],
  message="Here go the contents of the message.",
)

send from the cli

python -m ezmail -s "Email sent from bash" -r "r1@example.com" "r2@example.com" -m "This is my message."

More advanced uses

This module allows adding attachments to the email, as well as reading in the message and / or recipients from a file instead of defining them directly.

python

Python automatically detects the type of data that is passed into the different fields.

For example, to read the recipients from a file, simply pass in a Path or file object instead of a list of strings.

A file that defines the recipients must have one recipient per line:

r1@example.com
John Doe <john@example.com>

The message can also be taken from a Path or file object. If the message contents are html, remember to set the html flag to True.

To add attachments, pass in a list of Paths or (read-binary) file objects. The type is automatically detected.

If an env file with a name different from .env is used, pass it into envfile as a Path object or a string

For example:

from pathlib import Path
from ezmail import send_mail

recipients_file = Path("path/to/recipients.txt")
messages_file = open("path/to/message.html", "r")

attachments = [
  Path("path/to/attachment1.csv"),
  open("path/to/attachment2.jpg", "rb"),
]

envfile = Path("my/.envfile")

send_mail(
  subject="Email sent with Python",
  recipients=recipients_file,
  message=messages_file,
  attachments=attachments,
  envfile=envfile,
  html=True,
)

cli

python -m ezmail --help to see how to call from the command line

Possible flags:

• -s or --subject: the subject of the email (single argument)
• message:
  • -m or --message: the contents of the email OR
  • -f or --file: the file containing the contents of the email
• recipients:
  • -r or --recipients: the recipients of the email (one or more arguments) OR
  • -rf or --recipientsfile: the file containing the addresses of the recipients
• -a or --attachments: a list of files to attach to the email (one or more arguments)
• -e or --env: the env file where the credentials are defined (default .env)
• -H or --html: (flag) if present, the contents of the message will be sent as html
• -v or --verbose: set SMTP server debug level to 1, to debug possible connection issues

Popular SMTP servers

Here is a brief description of popular SMTP servers.

If having trouble setting up the SMTP server, pass in verbose=True into the python method, or the flag -v on the cli version.

gmail

Gmail constantly changes the requirements to be able to send out emails through SMTP. It is recommended that you follow a guide.

Then, fill in the missing values from the following .env file

USERNAME=
PASSWORD=
SMTP="smtp.gmail.com"
PORT=465

Zoho

Zoho makes it very simple to send emails through SMTP. Fill in the missing values from the following .env file and that's it!

USERNAME=
PASSWORD=
SMTP="smtp.zoho.com"
PORT=465