Although Python provides a mail sending interface via the smtplib\nmodule, Django provides a couple of light wrappers over it. These wrappers are\nprovided to make sending email extra quick, to help test email sending during\ndevelopment, and to provide support for platforms that can’t use SMTP.
The code lives in the django.core.mail module.
Use send_mail() for straightforward email sending. For example, to send a\nplain text message:
from django.core.mail import send_mail\n\nsend_mail(\n "Subject here",\n "Here is the message.",\n "from@example.com",\n ["to@example.com"],\n fail_silently=False,\n)\nWhen additional email sending functionality is needed, use\nEmailMessage or EmailMultiAlternatives. For example, to send\na multipart email that includes both HTML and plain text versions with a\nspecific template and custom headers, you can use the following approach:
from django.core.mail import EmailMultiAlternatives\nfrom django.template.loader import render_to_string\n\n# First, render the plain text content.\ntext_content = render_to_string(\n "templates/emails/my_email.txt",\n context={"my_variable": 42},\n)\n\n# Secondly, render the HTML content.\nhtml_content = render_to_string(\n "templates/emails/my_email.html",\n context={"my_variable": 42},\n)\n\n# Then, create a multipart email instance.\nmsg = EmailMultiAlternatives(\n subject="Subject here",\n body=text_content,\n from_email="from@example.com",\n to=["to@example.com"],\n headers={"List-Unsubscribe": "<mailto:unsub@example.com>"},\n)\n\n# Lastly, attach the HTML content to the email instance and send.\nmsg.attach_alternative(html_content, "text/html")\nmsg.send()\nMail is sent using the SMTP host and port specified in the\nEMAIL_HOST and EMAIL_PORT settings. The\nEMAIL_HOST_USER and EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD settings, if\nset, are used to authenticate to the SMTP server, and the\nEMAIL_USE_TLS and EMAIL_USE_SSL settings control whether\na secure connection is used.
send_mail()Link to this heading#In most cases, you can send email using django.core.mail.send_mail().
The subject, message, from_email and recipient_list parameters\nare required.
subject: A string.
message: A string.
from_email: A string. If None, Django will use the value of the\nDEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL setting.
recipient_list: A list of strings, each an email address. Each\nmember of recipient_list will see the other recipients in the «To:»\nfield of the email message.
The following parameters are optional, and must be given as keyword arguments\nif used.
\nfail_silently: A boolean. When it’s False, send_mail() will raise\nan smtplib.SMTPException if an error occurs. See the smtplib\ndocs for a list of possible exceptions, all of which are subclasses of\nSMTPException.
auth_user: The optional username to use to authenticate to the SMTP\nserver. If this isn’t provided, Django will use the value of the\nEMAIL_HOST_USER setting.
auth_password: The optional password to use to authenticate to the\nSMTP server. If this isn’t provided, Django will use the value of the\nEMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD setting.
connection: The optional email backend to use to send the mail.\nIf unspecified, an instance of the default backend will be used.\nSee the documentation on Email backends\nfor more details.
html_message: If html_message is provided, the resulting email will\nbe a multipart/alternative email with message as the\ntext/plain content type and html_message as the\ntext/html content type.
The return value will be the number of successfully delivered messages (which\ncan be 0 or 1 since it can only send one message).
send_mass_mail()Link to this heading#django.core.mail.send_mass_mail() is intended to handle mass emailing.
datatuple is a tuple in which each element is in this format:
(subject, message, from_email, recipient_list)\nfail_silently, auth_user, auth_password and connection have the\nsame functions as in send_mail(). They must be given as keyword arguments\nif used.
Each separate element of datatuple results in a separate email message.\nAs in send_mail(), recipients in the same recipient_list will all see\nthe other addresses in the email messages” «To:» field.
For example, the following code would send two different messages to\ntwo different sets of recipients; however, only one connection to the\nmail server would be opened:
\nmessage1 = (\n "Subject here",\n "Here is the message",\n "from@example.com",\n ["first@example.com", "other@example.com"],\n)\nmessage2 = (\n "Another Subject",\n "Here is another message",\n "from@example.com",\n ["second@test.com"],\n)\nsend_mass_mail((message1, message2), fail_silently=False)\nThe return value will be the number of successfully delivered messages.
\n\nsend_mass_mail() vs. send_mail()Link to this heading#The main difference between send_mass_mail() and send_mail() is\nthat send_mail() opens a connection to the mail server each time it’s\nexecuted, while send_mass_mail() uses a single connection for all of its\nmessages. This makes send_mass_mail() slightly more efficient.
mail_admins()Link to this heading#django.core.mail.mail_admins() is a shortcut for sending an email to the\nsite admins, as defined in the ADMINS setting.
mail_admins() prefixes the subject with the value of the\nEMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX setting, which is "[Django] " by default.
The «From:» header of the email will be the value of the\nSERVER_EMAIL setting.
This method exists for convenience and readability.
\nIf html_message is provided, the resulting email will be a\nmultipart/alternative email with message as the\ntext/plain content type and html_message as the\ntext/html content type.
mail_managers()Link to this heading#django.core.mail.mail_managers() is just like mail_admins(), except it\nsends an email to the site managers, as defined in the MANAGERS\nsetting.
This sends a single email to john@example.com and jane@example.com, with them\nboth appearing in the «To:»:
\nsend_mail(\n "Subject",\n "Message.",\n "from@example.com",\n ["john@example.com", "jane@example.com"],\n)\nThis sends a message to john@example.com and jane@example.com, with\nthem both receiving a separate email:
datatuple = (\n ("Subject", "Message.", "from@example.com", ["john@example.com"]),\n ("Subject", "Message.", "from@example.com", ["jane@example.com"]),\n)\nsend_mass_mail(datatuple)\nHeader injection is a security exploit in which an attacker inserts extra\nemail headers to control the «To:» and «From:» in email messages that your\nscripts generate.
\nThe Django email functions outlined above all protect against header injection\nby forbidding newlines in header values. If any subject, from_email or\nrecipient_list contains a newline (in either Unix, Windows or Mac style),\nthe email function (e.g. send_mail()) will raise ValueError and,\nhence, will not send the email. It’s your responsibility to validate all data\nbefore passing it to the email functions.
If a message contains headers at the start of the string, the headers will\nbe printed as the first bit of the email message.
Here’s an example view that takes a subject, message and from_email\nfrom the request’s POST data, sends that to admin@example.com and redirects\nto «/contact/thanks/» when it’s done:
from django.core.mail import send_mail\nfrom django.http import HttpResponse, HttpResponseRedirect\n\n\ndef send_email(request):\n subject = request.POST.get("subject", "")\n message = request.POST.get("message", "")\n from_email = request.POST.get("from_email", "")\n if subject and message and from_email:\n try:\n send_mail(subject, message, from_email, ["admin@example.com"])\n except ValueError:\n return HttpResponse("Invalid header found.")\n return HttpResponseRedirect("/contact/thanks/")\n else:\n # In reality we'd use a form class\n # to get proper validation errors.\n return HttpResponse("Make sure all fields are entered and valid.")\nEmailMessage classLink to this heading#Django’s send_mail() and send_mass_mail() functions are actually\nthin wrappers that make use of the EmailMessage class.
Not all features of the EmailMessage class are available through the\nsend_mail() and related wrapper functions. If you wish to use advanced\nfeatures, such as BCC’ed recipients, file attachments, or multi-part email,\nyou’ll need to create EmailMessage instances directly.
EmailMessage is responsible for creating the email message itself. The\nemail backend is then responsible for sending the\nemail.
For convenience, EmailMessage provides a send()\nmethod for sending a single email. If you need to send multiple messages, the\nemail backend API provides an alternative.
EmailMessage ObjectsLink to this heading#The EmailMessage class is initialized with the following\nparameters. All parameters are optional and can be set at any time prior\nto calling the send() method.
The first four parameters can be passed as positional or keyword arguments,\nbut must be in the given order if positional arguments are used:
\nsubject: The subject line of the email.
body: The body text. This should be a plain text message.
from_email: The sender’s address. Both fred@example.com and\n"Fred" <fred@example.com> forms are legal. If omitted, the\nDEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL setting is used.
to: A list or tuple of recipient addresses.
The following parameters must be given as keyword arguments if used:
\ncc: A list or tuple of recipient addresses used in the «Cc» header\nwhen sending the email.
bcc: A list or tuple of addresses used in the «Bcc» header when\nsending the email.
reply_to: A list or tuple of recipient addresses used in the\n«Reply-To» header when sending the email.
attachments: A list of attachments to put on the message. Each can\nbe an instance of MIMEPart or\nEmailAttachment, or a tuple with attributes\n(filename, content, mimetype).
headers: A dictionary of extra headers to put on the message. The\nkeys are the header name, values are the header values. It’s up to the\ncaller to ensure header names and values are in the correct format for\nan email message. The corresponding attribute is extra_headers.
connection: An email backend instance.\nUse this parameter if you are sending the EmailMessage via\nsend() and you want to use the same connection for multiple\nmessages. If omitted, a new connection is created when send() is\ncalled. This parameter is ignored when using\nsend_messages().
For example:
\nfrom django.core.mail import EmailMessage\n\nemail = EmailMessage(\n subject="Hello",\n body="Body goes here",\n from_email="from@example.com",\n to=["to1@example.com", "to2@example.com"],\n bcc=["bcc@example.com"],\n reply_to=["another@example.com"],\n headers={"Message-ID": "foo"},\n)\nThe class has the following methods:
\nSends the message. If a connection was specified when the email was\nconstructed, that connection will be used. Otherwise, an instance of\nthe default backend will be instantiated and used. If the keyword\nargument fail_silently is True, exceptions raised while sending\nthe message will be quashed. An empty list of recipients will not raise\nan exception. It will return 1 if the message was sent\nsuccessfully, otherwise 0.
Constructs and returns a Python email.message.EmailMessage\nobject representing the message to be sent.
The keyword argument policy allows specifying the set of rules for\nupdating and serializing the representation of the message. It must be\nan email.policy.Policy object. Defaults to\nemail.policy.default. In certain cases you may want to use\nSMTP, SMTPUTF8 or a custom\npolicy. For example,\ndjango.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend uses the\nSMTP policy to ensure \\r\\n line endings as\nrequired by the SMTP protocol.
If you ever need to extend Django’s EmailMessage class,\nyou’ll probably want to override this method to put the content you\nwant into the Python EmailMessage object.
Returns a list of all the recipients of the message, whether they’re\nrecorded in the to, cc or bcc attributes. This is another\nmethod you might need to override when subclassing, because the SMTP\nserver needs to be told the full list of recipients when the message\nis sent. If you add another way to specify recipients in your class,\nthey need to be returned from this method as well.
Creates a new attachment and adds it to the message. There are two ways\nto call attach():
You can pass it three arguments: filename, content and\nmimetype. filename is the name of the file attachment as it\nwill appear in the email, content is the data that will be\ncontained inside the attachment and mimetype is the optional MIME\ntype for the attachment. If you omit mimetype, the MIME content\ntype will be guessed from the filename of the attachment.
For example:
\nmessage.attach("design.png", img_data, "image/png")\nIf you specify a mimetype of message/rfc822,\ncontent can be a django.core.mail.EmailMessage or\nPython’s email.message.EmailMessage or\nemail.message.Message.
For a mimetype starting with text/, content is\nexpected to be a string. Binary data will be decoded using UTF-8,\nand if that fails, the MIME type will be changed to\napplication/octet-stream and the data will be attached\nunchanged.
Or for attachments requiring additional headers or parameters, you\ncan pass attach() a single Python\nMIMEPart object. This will be attached\ndirectly to the resulting message. For example, to attach an inline\nimage with a Content-ID:
import email.utils\nfrom email.message import MIMEPart\nfrom django.core.mail import EmailMultiAlternatives\n\nmessage = EmailMultiAlternatives(...)\nimage_data_bytes = ... # Load image as bytes\n\n# Create a random Content-ID, including angle brackets\ncid = email.utils.make_msgid()\ninline_image = email.message.MIMEPart()\ninline_image.set_content(\n image_data_bytes,\n maintype="image",\n subtype="png", # or "jpeg", etc. depending on the image type\n disposition="inline",\n cid=cid,\n)\nmessage.attach(inline_image)\n# Refer to Content-ID in HTML without angle brackets\nmessage.attach_alternative(f'… <img src="cid:{cid[1:-1]}"> …', "text/html")\nPython’s email.contentmanager.set_content() documentation\ndescribes the supported arguments for MIMEPart.set_content().
Creates a new attachment using a file from your filesystem. Call it\nwith the path of the file to attach and, optionally, the MIME type to\nuse for the attachment. If the MIME type is omitted, it will be guessed\nfrom the filename. You can use it like this:
\nmessage.attach_file("/images/weather_map.png")\nFor MIME types starting with text/, binary data is handled\nas in attach().
A named tuple to store attachments to an email.
\nThe named tuple has the following indexes:
\nfilename
content
mimetype
It can be useful to include multiple versions of the content in an email; the\nclassic example is to send both text and HTML versions of a message. With\nDjango’s email library, you can do this using the\nEmailMultiAlternatives class.
A subclass of EmailMessage that allows additional versions of the\nmessage body in the email via the attach_alternative() method. This\ndirectly inherits all methods (including the class initialization) from\nEmailMessage.
A list of EmailAlternative named tuples.\nThis is particularly useful in tests:
self.assertEqual(len(msg.alternatives), 1)\nself.assertEqual(msg.alternatives[0].content, html_content)\nself.assertEqual(msg.alternatives[0].mimetype, "text/html")\nAlternatives should only be added using the attach_alternative()\nmethod, or passed to the constructor.
Attach an alternative representation of the message body in the email.
\nFor example, to send a text and HTML combination, you could write:
\nfrom django.core.mail import EmailMultiAlternatives\n\nsubject = "hello"\nfrom_email = "from@example.com"\nto = "to@example.com"\ntext_content = "This is an important message."\nhtml_content = "<p>This is an <strong>important</strong> message.</p>"\nmsg = EmailMultiAlternatives(subject, text_content, from_email, [to])\nmsg.attach_alternative(html_content, "text/html")\nmsg.send()\nReturns a boolean indicating whether the provided text is\ncontained in the email body and in all attached MIME type\ntext/* alternatives.
This can be useful when testing emails. For example:
\ndef test_contains_email_content(self):\n subject = "Hello World"\n from_email = "from@example.com"\n to = "to@example.com"\n msg = EmailMultiAlternatives(subject, "I am content.", from_email, [to])\n msg.attach_alternative("<p>I am content.</p>", "text/html")\n\n self.assertIs(msg.body_contains("I am content"), True)\n self.assertIs(msg.body_contains("<p>I am content.</p>"), False)\nA named tuple to store alternative versions of email content.
\nThe named tuple has the following indexes:
\ncontent
mimetype
By default, the MIME type of the body parameter in an EmailMessage\nis "text/plain". It is good practice to leave this alone, because it\nguarantees that any recipient will be able to read the email, regardless of\ntheir mail client. However, if you are confident that your recipients can\nhandle an alternative content type, you can use the content_subtype\nattribute on the EmailMessage class to change the main content type.\nThe major type will always be "text", but you can change the subtype. For\nexample:
msg = EmailMessage(subject, html_content, from_email, [to])\nmsg.content_subtype = "html" # Main content is now text/html\nmsg.send()\nThe actual sending of an email is handled by the email backend.
\nThe email backend class has the following methods:
\nopen() instantiates a long-lived email-sending connection.
close() closes the current email-sending connection.
send_messages(email_messages) sends a list of EmailMessage\nobjects. If the connection is not open, this call will implicitly open the\nconnection, and close the connection afterward. If the connection is already\nopen, it will be left open after mail has been sent.
It can also be used as a context manager, which will automatically call\nopen() and close() as needed:
from django.core import mail\n\nwith mail.get_connection() as connection:\n mail.EmailMessage(\n subject1,\n body1,\n from1,\n [to1],\n connection=connection,\n ).send()\n mail.EmailMessage(\n subject2,\n body2,\n from2,\n [to2],\n connection=connection,\n ).send()\nThe get_connection() function in django.core.mail returns an\ninstance of the email backend that you can use.
By default, a call to get_connection() will return an instance of the\nemail backend specified in EMAIL_BACKEND. If you specify the\nbackend argument, an instance of that backend will be instantiated.
The keyword-only fail_silently argument controls how the backend should\nhandle errors. If fail_silently is True, exceptions during the email\nsending process will be silently ignored.
All other keyword arguments are passed directly to the constructor of the\nemail backend.
\nDjango ships with several email sending backends. With the exception of the\nSMTP backend (which is the default), these backends are only useful during\ntesting and development. If you have special email sending requirements, you\ncan write your own email backend.
\n\nThis is the default backend. Email will be sent through a SMTP server.
\nThe value for each argument is retrieved from the matching setting if the\nargument is None:
host: EMAIL_HOST
port: EMAIL_PORT
username: EMAIL_HOST_USER
password: EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD
use_tls: EMAIL_USE_TLS
use_ssl: EMAIL_USE_SSL
timeout: EMAIL_TIMEOUT
ssl_keyfile: EMAIL_SSL_KEYFILE
ssl_certfile: EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE
The SMTP backend is the default configuration inherited by Django. If you\nwant to specify it explicitly, put the following in your settings:
\nEMAIL_BACKEND = "django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend"\nIf unspecified, the default timeout will be the one provided by\nsocket.getdefaulttimeout(), which defaults to None (no timeout).
Instead of sending out real emails the console backend just writes the\nemails that would be sent to the standard output. By default, the console\nbackend writes to stdout. You can use a different stream-like object by\nproviding the stream keyword argument when constructing the connection.
To specify this backend, put the following in your settings:
\nEMAIL_BACKEND = "django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend"\nThis backend is not intended for use in production – it is provided as a\nconvenience that can be used during development.
\nThe file backend writes emails to a file. A new file is created for each new\nsession that is opened on this backend. The directory to which the files are\nwritten is either taken from the EMAIL_FILE_PATH setting or from the\nfile_path keyword when creating a connection with get_connection().
To specify this backend, put the following in your settings:
\nEMAIL_BACKEND = "django.core.mail.backends.filebased.EmailBackend"\nEMAIL_FILE_PATH = "/tmp/app-messages" # change this to a proper location\nThis backend is not intended for use in production – it is provided as a\nconvenience that can be used during development.
\nThe 'locmem' backend stores messages in a special attribute of the\ndjango.core.mail module. The outbox attribute is created when the first\nmessage is sent. It’s a list with an EmailMessage instance for each\nmessage that would be sent.
To specify this backend, put the following in your settings:
\nEMAIL_BACKEND = "django.core.mail.backends.locmem.EmailBackend"\nThis backend is not intended for use in production – it is provided as a\nconvenience that can be used during development and testing.
\nDjango’s test runner automatically uses this backend for testing.
\nAs the name suggests the dummy backend does nothing with your messages. To\nspecify this backend, put the following in your settings:
\nEMAIL_BACKEND = "django.core.mail.backends.dummy.EmailBackend"\nThis backend is not intended for use in production – it is provided as a\nconvenience that can be used during development.
\n\nIf you need to change how emails are sent you can write your own email\nbackend. The EMAIL_BACKEND setting in your settings file is then\nthe Python import path for your backend class.
Custom email backends should subclass BaseEmailBackend that is located in\nthe django.core.mail.backends.base module. A custom email backend must\nimplement the send_messages(email_messages) method. This method receives a\nlist of EmailMessage instances and returns the number of successfully\ndelivered messages. If your backend has any concept of a persistent session or\nconnection, you should also implement the open() and close() methods.\nRefer to smtp.EmailBackend for a reference implementation.
Establishing and closing an SMTP connection (or any other network connection,\nfor that matter) is an expensive process. If you have a lot of emails to send,\nit makes sense to reuse an SMTP connection, rather than creating and\ndestroying a connection every time you want to send an email.
\nThere are two ways you tell an email backend to reuse a connection.
\nFirstly, you can use the send_messages() method on a connection. This takes\na list of EmailMessage (or subclass) instances, and sends them all\nusing that single connection. As a consequence, any connection set on an individual message is ignored.
For example, if you have a function called get_notification_email() that\nreturns a list of EmailMessage objects representing some periodic\nemail you wish to send out, you could send these emails using a single call to\nsend_messages():
from django.core import mail\n\nconnection = mail.get_connection() # Use default email connection\nmessages = get_notification_email()\nconnection.send_messages(messages)\nIn this example, the call to send_messages() opens a connection on the\nbackend, sends the list of messages, and then closes the connection again.
The second approach is to use the open() and close() methods on the\nemail backend to manually control the connection. send_messages() will not\nmanually open or close the connection if it is already open, so if you\nmanually open the connection, you can control when it is closed. For example:
from django.core import mail\n\nconnection = mail.get_connection()\n\n# Manually open the connection\nconnection.open()\n\n# Construct an email message that uses the connection\nemail1 = mail.EmailMessage(\n "Hello",\n "Body goes here",\n "from@example.com",\n ["to1@example.com"],\n connection=connection,\n)\nemail1.send() # Send the email\n\n# Construct two more messages\nemail2 = mail.EmailMessage(\n "Hello",\n "Body goes here",\n "from@example.com",\n ["to2@example.com"],\n)\nemail3 = mail.EmailMessage(\n "Hello",\n "Body goes here",\n "from@example.com",\n ["to3@example.com"],\n)\n\n# Send the two emails in a single call -\nconnection.send_messages([email2, email3])\n# The connection was already open so send_messages() doesn't close it.\n# We need to manually close the connection.\nconnection.close()\nThere are times when you do not want Django to send emails at\nall. For example, while developing a website, you probably don’t want\nto send out thousands of emails – but you may want to validate that\nemails will be sent to the right people under the right conditions,\nand that those emails will contain the correct content.
\nThe easiest way to configure email for local development is to use the\nconsole email backend. This backend\nredirects all email to stdout, allowing you to inspect the content of mail.
The file email backend can also be useful\nduring development – this backend dumps the contents of every SMTP connection\nto a file that can be inspected at your leisure.
\nAnother approach is to use a «dumb» SMTP server that receives the emails\nlocally and displays them to the terminal, but does not actually send\nanything. The aiosmtpd package provides a way to accomplish this:
\npython -m pip install "aiosmtpd >= 1.4.5"\n\npython -m aiosmtpd -n -l localhost:8025\nThis command will start a minimal SMTP server listening on port 8025 of\nlocalhost. This server prints to standard output all email headers and the\nemail body. You then only need to set the EMAIL_HOST and\nEMAIL_PORT accordingly. For a more detailed discussion of SMTP\nserver options, see the documentation of the aiosmtpd module.
For information about unit-testing the sending of emails in your application,\nsee the Email services section of the testing documentation.
\n