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views:

862

answers:

3

Hi,

I have a very simple piece of code (just for testing):

import smtplib
import time

server = 'smtp.myprovider.com'
recipients = ['[email protected]']
sender = '[email protected]'
message = 'Subject: [PGS]: Results\n\nBlaBlaBla'

session = smtplib.SMTP(server)

session.sendmail(sender,recipients,message);

This works but the problem is that e-mail clients don't display a sender. I want to be able to add a sender name to the e-mail. Suggestions?

+4  A: 

smtplib doesn't automatically include a From: header, so you have to put one in yourself:

message = 'From: [email protected]\nSubject: [PGS]: Results\n\nBlaBlaBla'

(In fact, smtplib doesn't include any headers automatically, but just sends the text that you give it as a raw message)

dF
Perhaps explaining that smtplib does not automatically include *any* header would be even more helpful.
ΤΖΩΤΖΙΟΥ
+6  A: 

You can utilize the email.message.Message class, and use it to generate mime headers, including from:, to: and subject. Send the as_string() result via SMTP.

>>> from email import message
>>> m1=message.Message()
>>> m1.add_header('from','[email protected]')
>>> m1.add_header('to','[email protected]')
>>> m1.add_header('subject','test')
>>> m1.set_payload('test\n')
>>> m1.as_string()
'from: [email protected]\nto: [email protected]\nsubject: test\n\ntest\n'
>>>
gimel
+2  A: 

The "sender" you're specifying in this case is the envelope sender that is passed onto the SMTP server.

What your MUA (Mail User Agent - i.e. outlook/Thunderbird etc.) shows you is the "From:" header.

Normally, if I'm using smtplib, I'd compile the headers separately:

headers = "From %s\nTo: %s\n\n" % (email_from, email_to)

The format of the From header is by convention normally "Name" <user@domain>

You should be including a "Message-Id" header and a "Reply-To" header as well in all communications. Especially since spam filters may pick up on the lack of these as a great probability that the mail is spam.

If you've got your mail body in the variable body, just compile the overall message with:

message = headers + body

Note the double newline at the end of the headers. It's also worth noting that SMTP servers should separate headers with newlines only (i.e. LF - linfeed). However, I have seen a Windows SMTP server or two that uses \r\n (i.e. CRLF). If you're on Windows, YMMV.

Phil