Sending HTML email using Python

291

votes

How can I send the HTML content in an email using Python? I can send simple text.

Just a big fat warning. If you are sending non-ASCII email using Python < 3.0, consider using the email in Django. It wraps UTF-8 strings correctly, and also is much simpler to use. You have been warned :-) – Anders Rune Jensen

If you want to send a HTML with unicode see here: stackoverflow.com/questions/36397827/… – guettli

461

votes

From Python v2.7.14 documentation - 18.1.11. email: Examples:

Here’s an example of how to create an HTML message with an alternative plain text version:

#! /usr/bin/python

import smtplib

from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# me == my email address
# you == recipient's email address
me = "[email protected]"
you = "[email protected]"

# Create message container - the correct MIME type is multipart/alternative.
msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
msg['Subject'] = "Link"
msg['From'] = me
msg['To'] = you

# Create the body of the message (a plain-text and an HTML version).
text = "Hi!\nHow are you?\nHere is the link you wanted:\nhttp://www.python.org"
html = """\
<html>
  <head></head>
  <body>
    <p>Hi!<br>
       How are you?<br>
       Here is the <a href="http://www.python.org">link</a> you wanted.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>
"""

# Record the MIME types of both parts - text/plain and text/html.
part1 = MIMEText(text, 'plain')
part2 = MIMEText(html, 'html')

# Attach parts into message container.
# According to RFC 2046, the last part of a multipart message, in this case
# the HTML message, is best and preferred.
msg.attach(part1)
msg.attach(part2)

# Send the message via local SMTP server.
s = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
# sendmail function takes 3 arguments: sender's address, recipient's address
# and message to send - here it is sent as one string.
s.sendmail(me, you, msg.as_string())
s.quit()

66

votes

You might try using my mailer module.

from mailer import Mailer
from mailer import Message

message = Message(From="[email protected]",
                  To="[email protected]")
message.Subject = "An HTML Email"
message.Html = """<p>Hi!<br>
   How are you?<br>
   Here is the <a href="http://www.python.org">link</a> you wanted.</p>"""

sender = Mailer('smtp.example.com')
sender.send(message)

62

votes

Here is a Gmail implementation of the accepted answer:

import smtplib

from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# me == my email address
# you == recipient's email address
me = "[email protected]"
you = "[email protected]"

# Create message container - the correct MIME type is multipart/alternative.
msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
msg['Subject'] = "Link"
msg['From'] = me
msg['To'] = you

# Create the body of the message (a plain-text and an HTML version).
text = "Hi!\nHow are you?\nHere is the link you wanted:\nhttp://www.python.org"
html = """\
<html>
  <head></head>
  <body>
    <p>Hi!<br>
       How are you?<br>
       Here is the <a href="http://www.python.org">link</a> you wanted.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>
"""

# Record the MIME types of both parts - text/plain and text/html.
part1 = MIMEText(text, 'plain')
part2 = MIMEText(html, 'html')

# Attach parts into message container.
# According to RFC 2046, the last part of a multipart message, in this case
# the HTML message, is best and preferred.
msg.attach(part1)
msg.attach(part2)
# Send the message via local SMTP server.
mail = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587)

mail.ehlo()

mail.starttls()

mail.login('userName', 'password')
mail.sendmail(me, you, msg.as_string())
mail.quit()

54

votes

Here is a simple way to send an HTML email, just by specifying the Content-Type header as 'text/html':

import email.message
import smtplib

msg = email.message.Message()
msg['Subject'] = 'foo'
msg['From'] = '[email protected]'
msg['To'] = '[email protected]'
msg.add_header('Content-Type','text/html')
msg.set_payload('Body of <b>message</b>')

# Send the message via local SMTP server.
s = smtplib.SMTP('localhost')
s.starttls()
s.login(email_login,
        email_passwd)
s.sendmail(msg['From'], [msg['To']], msg.as_string())
s.quit()

15

votes

for python3, improve @taltman 's answer:

use email.message.EmailMessage instead of email.message.Message to construct email.
use email.set_content func, assign subtype='html' argument. instead of low level func set_payload and add header manually.
use SMTP.send_message func instead of SMTP.sendmail func to send email.
use with block to auto close connection.

from email.message import EmailMessage
from smtplib import SMTP

# construct email
email = EmailMessage()
email['Subject'] = 'foo'
email['From'] = '[email protected]'
email['To'] = '[email protected]'
email.set_content('<font color="red">red color text</font>', subtype='html')

# Send the message via local SMTP server.
with smtplib.SMTP('localhost') as s:
    s.login('foo_user', 'bar_password')
    s.send_message(email)

11

votes

Here's sample code. This is inspired from code found on the Python Cookbook site (can't find the exact link)

def createhtmlmail (html, text, subject, fromEmail):
    """Create a mime-message that will render HTML in popular
    MUAs, text in better ones"""
    import MimeWriter
    import mimetools
    import cStringIO

    out = cStringIO.StringIO() # output buffer for our message 
    htmlin = cStringIO.StringIO(html)
    txtin = cStringIO.StringIO(text)

    writer = MimeWriter.MimeWriter(out)
    #
    # set up some basic headers... we put subject here
    # because smtplib.sendmail expects it to be in the
    # message body
    #
    writer.addheader("From", fromEmail)
    writer.addheader("Subject", subject)
    writer.addheader("MIME-Version", "1.0")
    #
    # start the multipart section of the message
    # multipart/alternative seems to work better
    # on some MUAs than multipart/mixed
    #
    writer.startmultipartbody("alternative")
    writer.flushheaders()
    #
    # the plain text section
    #
    subpart = writer.nextpart()
    subpart.addheader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "quoted-printable")
    pout = subpart.startbody("text/plain", [("charset", 'us-ascii')])
    mimetools.encode(txtin, pout, 'quoted-printable')
    txtin.close()
    #
    # start the html subpart of the message
    #
    subpart = writer.nextpart()
    subpart.addheader("Content-Transfer-Encoding", "quoted-printable")
    #
    # returns us a file-ish object we can write to
    #
    pout = subpart.startbody("text/html", [("charset", 'us-ascii')])
    mimetools.encode(htmlin, pout, 'quoted-printable')
    htmlin.close()
    #
    # Now that we're done, close our writer and
    # return the message body
    #
    writer.lastpart()
    msg = out.getvalue()
    out.close()
    print msg
    return msg

if __name__=="__main__":
    import smtplib
    html = 'html version'
    text = 'TEST VERSION'
    subject = "BACKUP REPORT"
    message = createhtmlmail(html, text, subject, 'From Host <[email protected]>')
    server = smtplib.SMTP("smtp_server_address","smtp_port")
    server.login('username', 'password')
    server.sendmail('[email protected]', '[email protected]', message)
    server.quit()

5

votes

Actually, yagmail took a bit different approach.

It will by default send HTML, with automatic fallback for incapable email-readers. It is not the 17th century anymore.

Of course, it can be overridden, but here goes:

import yagmail
yag = yagmail.SMTP("[email protected]", "mypassword")

html_msg = """<p>Hi!<br>
              How are you?<br>
              Here is the <a href="http://www.python.org">link</a> you wanted.</p>"""

yag.send("[email protected]", "the subject", html_msg)

For installation instructions and many more great features, have a look at the github.

3

votes

Here's a working example to send plain text and HTML emails from Python using smtplib along with the CC and BCC options.

https://varunver.wordpress.com/2017/01/26/python-smtplib-send-plaintext-and-html-emails/

#!/usr/bin/env python
import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

def send_mail(params, type_):
      email_subject = params['email_subject']
      email_from = "[email protected]"
      email_to = params['email_to']
      email_cc = params.get('email_cc')
      email_bcc = params.get('email_bcc')
      email_body = params['email_body']

      msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
      msg['To'] = email_to
      msg['CC'] = email_cc
      msg['Subject'] = email_subject
      mt_html = MIMEText(email_body, type_)
      msg.attach(mt_html)

      server = smtplib.SMTP('YOUR_MAIL_SERVER.DOMAIN.COM')
      server.set_debuglevel(1)
      toaddrs = [email_to] + [email_cc] + [email_bcc]
      server.sendmail(email_from, toaddrs, msg.as_string())
      server.quit()

# Calling the mailer functions
params = {
    'email_to': '[email protected]',
    'email_cc': '[email protected]',
    'email_bcc': '[email protected]',
    'email_subject': 'Test message from python library',
    'email_body': '<h1>Hello World</h1>'
}
for t in ['plain', 'html']:
    send_mail(params, t)

1

votes

Here is my answer for AWS using boto3

    subject = "Hello"
    html = "<b>Hello Consumer</b>"

    client = boto3.client('ses', region_name='us-east-1', aws_access_key_id="your_key",
                      aws_secret_access_key="your_secret")

client.send_email(
    Source='ACME <[email protected]>',
    Destination={'ToAddresses': [email]},
    Message={
        'Subject': {'Data': subject},
        'Body': {
            'Html': {'Data': html}
        }
    }

1

votes

Simplest solution for sending email from Organizational account in Office 365:

from O365 import Message

html_template =     """ 
            <html>
            <head>
                <title></title>
            </head>
            <body>
                    {}
            </body>
            </html>
        """

final_html_data = html_template.format(df.to_html(index=False))

o365_auth = ('sender_username@company_email.com','Password')
m = Message(auth=o365_auth)
m.setRecipients('receiver_username@company_email.com')
m.setSubject('Weekly report')
m.setBodyHTML(final_html_data)
m.sendMessage()

here df is a dataframe converted to html Table, which is being injected to html_template

1

votes

I may be late in providing an answer here, but the Question asked a way to send HTML emails. Using a dedicated module like "email" is okay, but we can achieve the same results without using any new module. It all boils down to the Gmail Protocol.

Below is my simple sample code for sending HTML mail only by using "smtplib" and nothing else.

```
import smtplib

FROM = "[email protected]"
TO = "[email protected]"
SUBJECT= "Subject"
PWD = "thesecretkey"

TEXT="""
<h1>Hello</h1>
""" #Your Message (Even Supports HTML Directly)

message = f"Subject: {SUBJECT}\nFrom: {FROM}\nTo: {TO}\nContent-Type: text/html\n\n{TEXT}" #This is where the stuff happens

try:
    server=smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com",587)
    server.ehlo()
    server.starttls()
    server.login(FROM,PWD)
    server.sendmail(FROM,TO,message)
    server.close()
    print("Successfully sent the mail.")
except Exception as e:
    print("Failed to send the mail..", e)
```

Sending HTML email using Python

11 Answers