Python cannot send attachments by email

Question

I have the following code that works fine, but it does not send attachment files.

import smtplib import os from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart from email.mime.text import MIMEText from email.MIMEBase import MIMEBase from email import Encoders msg=MIMEMultipart() def mymail(address,body,format,mylist=None): msg['To']=address msg['From']=' [e-mail] ' if format=='txt': text_msg=MIMEText(body,'plain') elif format=='html': text_msg=MIMEText(body,'html') msg.attach(text_msg) if mylist is not None: mylist=[] fn=[] for f in range(len(mylist)): direct=os.getcwd() os.chdir(direct) part=MIMEBase('application','octet-stream') part.set_payload(open(mylist[f],'rb').read()) Encoders.encode_base64(part) part.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="%s"' % os.path.basename(mylist[f])) fn.append(part) msg.attach(fn) srv=smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com') srv.set_debuglevel(1) srv.ehlo() srv.starttls() srv.ehlo() srv.login('username','pass') srv.sendmail(msg['From'],msg['To'],msg.as_string()) srv.quit() if __name__=="__main__": address=raw_input('Enter an address to send email in the form " [e-mail] " ') body=raw_input('Enter the contents of the email') format=raw_input('The format is txt or html?') question=raw_input('Do you have any files to attach?Yes or No?') mylist=[] if question=='Yes' or question=='yes': fn=raw_input('Enter filename') mylist.append(fn) mymail(address,body,format,mylist) 

Am I not using MIMEBase correctly, or am I having an error in my code?

UPDATE ------------------------

  if mylist is not None: mylist=[] fn=[] for f in range(len(mylist)): direct=os.getcwd() os.chdir(direct) fn[f]=open(mylist[f],'r') part=msg.attach(MIMEApplication(fn[f])) mylist.append(part) 

Answer 1

I would recommend using MIMEApplication instead of nesting. You also do not need to do all the payload encodings manually, as this is already done automatically. This example works for me:

 from email.mime.text import MIMEText from email.mime.application import MIMEApplication from email.utils import formataddr from email.utils import make_msgid from email.utils import formatdate email = MIMEMultipart() email['From'] = formataddr(('Jane Doe', ' [e-mail] ')) email['Subject'] = u'Test email' email['Message-Id'] = make_msgid() email['Date'] = formatdate(localtime=True) email.attach(MIMEText(u'This is your email contents.')) email.attach(MIMEApplication('your binary data')) print email.as_string() 

Note that I will also take care of creating the correct date and message header.

Applying this to your code (and doing a few minor cleanups), I get the following working code:

 import smtplib import os from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart from email.mime.application import MIMEApplication from email.mime.text import MIMEText from email.utils import make_msgid from email.utils import formatdate def make_mail(address,body,format,mylist=[]): msg = MIMEMultipart() msg['To'] = address msg['From'] = ' [e-mail] ' msg['Message-Id'] = make_msgid() msg['Date'] = formatdate(localtime=True) msg.attach(MIMEText(body, 'plain' if format == 'txt' else 'html')) for filename in mylist: part = MIMEApplication(open(filename).read()) part.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment; filename="%s"' % os.path.basename(filename)) msg.attach(part) return msg def send_mail(msg): srv = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com') srv.set_debuglevel(1) srv.ehlo() srv.starttls() srv.ehlo() srv.login('username','pass') srv.sendmail(msg['From'], msg['To'], msg.as_string()) srv.quit() if __name__=="__main__": address=raw_input('Enter an address to send email in the form " [e-mail] " ') body=raw_input('Enter the contents of the email') format=raw_input('The format is txt or html?') question=raw_input('Do you have any files to attach?Yes or No?') mylist=[] if question=='Yes' or question=='yes': fn=raw_input('Enter filename') mylist.append(fn) msg = make_mail(address,body,format,mylist) send_mail(msg)