creating a MIME email template with images to send with python / django

Question

In my web application I send emails occasionally using a reusable mailer application like this:

user - self.user
subject = ("My subject")
from = "[email protected]"
message = render_to_string("welcomeEmail/welcome.eml", { 
                "user" : user,
                })
send_mail(subject, message, from, [email], priority="high" )

I want to send an email with embedded images in it, so I tried making the mail in a mail client, viewing the source, and putting it into my template (welcome.eml), but I've been unable to get it to render correctly in mail clients when its sent.

Does anyone know of an easy way for me to create mime encoded mail templates with inline images that will render correctly when I send them?

Answer 1

To send an e-mail with embedded images, use python's built-in email module to build up the MIME parts.

The following should do it:

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

# Load the image you want to send at bytes
img_data = open('logo.jpg', 'rb').read()

# Create a "related" message container that will hold the HTML 
# message and the image
msg = MIMEMultipart(_subtype='related')

# Create the body with HTML. Note that the image, since it is inline, is 
# referenced with the URL cid:myimage... you should take care to make
# "myimage" unique
body = MIMEText('<p>Hello <img src="cid:myimage" /></p>', _subtype='html')
msg.attach(body)

# Now create the MIME container for the image
img = MIMEImage(img_data, 'jpeg')
img.add_header('Content-Id', '<myimage>')  # angle brackets are important
msg.attach(img)

send_mail(subject, msg.as_string(), from, [to], priority="high")

In reality, you'll probably want to send the HTML along with a plain-text alternative. In that case, use MIMEMultipart to create the "related" mimetype container as the root. Then create another MIMEMultipart with the subtype "alternative", and attach both a MIMEText (subtype html) and a MIMEText (subtype plain) to the alternative part. Then attach the image to the related root.