Introduction

mr.hermes is an extension of the smtpd.DebuggingServer from the Python standard library. It dumps all mails it receives to the standard output and optionally to files in a configurable directory.

Usage

There are several ways to use this package. Probably the most two common are the following.

Command line

Install it with your preferred Python packaging tool (setuptools, distribute, pip or whatever). Run it from the command line using python -m smtpd -n -c mr.hermes.DebuggingServer localhost:8025.

If you want to dump the output to a directory, then set the DEBUG_SMTP_OUTPUT_PATH environment variable. For example like DEBUG_SMTP_OUTPUT_PATH=mails python -m smtpd -n -c mr.hermes.DebuggingServer localhost:8025.

Buildout

Add a part to your config like this:

[debugsmtp]
# Run a simple smtp server on 8025 that echos incoming email
recipe = zc.recipe.egg
eggs = mr.hermes
entry-points = debugsmtp=runpy:run_module
scripts = debugsmtp
host = localhost
port = 8025
path = ${buildout:directory}/var/mails
initialization =
    import os
    os.environ.setdefault('DEBUG_SMTP_OUTPUT_PATH', '${:path}')
    sys.argv[1:] = ['-n', '-c', 'mr.hermes.DebuggingServer', '${:host}:${:port}']
arguments = 'smtpd', run_name='__main__', alter_sys=True

You can then add this script to something like supervisord and use mr.laforge to automatically start it when you need it.