Python GMail SMTP Example

(Note: Please see my latest posts at my new blog!)

I need to be able to send an email from my python script, and I wanted to be able to use my GMail for the outgoing SMTP server. It becomes a little tricky because the GMail servers require authentication. I searched around and found some good examples on the Internet and then fine tuned them a bit.

import os
import smtplib
import mimetypes
from email.MIMEMultipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.MIMEBase import MIMEBase
from email.MIMEText import MIMEText
from email.MIMEAudio import MIMEAudio
from email.MIMEImage import MIMEImage
from email.Encoders import encode_base64

def sendMail(subject, text, *attachmentFilePaths):
  gmailUser = 'yo.mama@gmail.com'
  gmailPassword = 'bogus!'
  recipient = 'test@test.com'

  msg = MIMEMultipart()
  msg['From'] = gmailUser
  msg['To'] = recipient
  msg['Subject'] = subject
  msg.attach(MIMEText(text))

  for attachmentFilePath in attachmentFilePaths:
    msg.attach(getAttachment(attachmentFilePath))

  mailServer = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587)
  mailServer.ehlo()
  mailServer.starttls()
  mailServer.ehlo()
  mailServer.login(gmailUser, gmailPassword)
  mailServer.sendmail(gmailUser, recipient, msg.as_string())
  mailServer.close()

  print('Sent email to %s' % recipient)

def getAttachment(attachmentFilePath):
  contentType, encoding = mimetypes.guess_type(attachmentFilePath)

  if contentType is None or encoding is not None:
    contentType = 'application/octet-stream'

  mainType, subType = contentType.split('/', 1)
  file = open(attachmentFilePath, 'rb')

  if mainType == 'text':
    attachment = MIMEText(file.read())
  elif mainType == 'message':
    attachment = email.message_from_file(file)
  elif mainType == 'image':
    attachment = MIMEImage(file.read(),_subType=subType)
  elif mainType == 'audio':
    attachment = MIMEAudio(file.read(),_subType=subType)
  else:
    attachment = MIMEBase(mainType, subType)
  attachment.set_payload(file.read())
  encode_base64(attachment)

  file.close()

  attachment.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment',   filename=os.path.basename(attachmentFilePath))
  return attachment

Derived from: http://kutuma.blogspot.com/2007/08/sending-emails-via-gmail-with-python.html and http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2003-September/225540.html