One of the most basic functions in a web application is the ability to send emails to your users.
The Flask-Mail extension provides a simple interface to set up SMTP with your Flask application and to send messages from your views and scripts.
Source code and issue tracking at Bitbucket.
Install with pip and easy_install:
pip install Flask-Mail
or download the latest version from Bitbucket:
hg clone http://bitbucket.org/danjac/flask-mail
cd flask-mail
python setup.py install
If you are using virtualenv, it is assumed that you are installing flask-mail in the same virtualenv as your Flask application(s).
Flask-Mail is configured through the standard Flask config API. These are the available options (each is explained later in the documentation):
In addition the standard Flask TESTING configuration option is used by Flask-Nail in unit tests (see below).
Emails are managed through a Mail instance:
from flask import Flask
from flaskext.mail import Mail
app = Flask(__name__)
mail = Mail(app)
Alternatively you can set up your Mail instance later at configuration time, using the init_app method:
mail = Mail()
app = Flask(__name__)
mail.init_app(app)
To send a message first create a Message instance:
from flaskext.mail import Message
@app.route("/")
def index():
msg = Message("Hello",
sender="from@example.com",
recipients=["to@example.com"])
You can set the recipient emails immediately, or individually:
msg.recipients = ["you@example.com"]
msg.add_recipient("somebodyelse@example.com")
If you have set DEFAULT_MAIL_SENDER you don’t need to set the message sender explicity, as it will use this configuration value by default:
msg = Message("Hello",
recipients=["to@example.com"])
If the sender is a two-element tuple, this will be split into name and address:
msg = Message("Hello",
sender=("Me", "me@example.com"))
assert msg.sender == "Me <me@example.com>"
The message can contain a body and/or HTML:
msg.body = "testing"
msg.html = "<b>testing</b>"
Finally, to send the message, you use the Mail instance configured with your Flask application:
mail.send(msg)
Usually in a web application you will be sending one or two emails per request. In certain situations you might want to be able to send perhaps dozens or hundreds of emails in a single batch - probably in an external process such as a command-line script or cronjob.
In that case you do things slightly differently:
with mail.connect() as conn:
for user in users:
message = '...'
subject = "hello, %s" % user.name
msg = Message(recipients=[user.email],
body=message,
subject=subject)
conn.send(msg)
The connection to your email host is kept alive and closed automatically once all the messages have been sent.
Adding attachments is straightforward:
with app.open_resource("image.png") as fp:
msg.attach("image.png", "image/png", fp.read())
See the API for details.
When you are sending messages inside of unit tests, or in a development environment, it’s useful to be able to suppress email sending.
If the setting TESTING is set to True, emails will be suppressed. Calling send() on your messages will not result in any messages being sent.
However, it’s still useful to track in your unit tests which emails have been sent.
When TESTING is on, an outbox list is attached to the thread local g object, so you can then inspect what emails are sent (or would be sent in production mode):
assert g.outbox[0].subject == "testing"
To prevent header injection attempts to send a message with newlines in the subject, sender or recipient addresses will result in a BadHeaderError.
Manages email messaging
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Sends a single message instance. If TESTING then will add the message to g.outbox.
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Opens a connection to the mail host.
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Handles connection to host.
Sends message.
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Encapsulates an email message.
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Adds an attachment to the message.
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Adds another recipient to the message.
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