aiosmtplib 1.0.1

asyncio SMTP client

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Introduction

aiosmtplib is an SMTP client for use with asyncio.

Basic usage:

import asyncio
import aiosmtplib

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
smtp = aiosmtplib.SMTP(hostname='localhost', port=1025, loop=loop)
loop.run_until_complete(smtp.connect())

async def send_a_message():
    sender = 'root@localhost'
    recipient = 'somebody@localhost'
    message = "Hello World"
    await smtp.sendmail(sender, [recipient], message)

loop.run_until_complete(send_a_message())

Requirements

Python 3.5+, compiled with SSL support, is required.

Connecting to an SMTP server

Initialize a new aiosmtplib.SMTP instance, then run its connect coroutine. Unlike in smtplib, initializing an instance does not automatically connect to the server, as that is a blocking operation.

Allowed arguments to initialize the client (or the connect method):

hostname

Server name (or IP) to connect to

port

Server port as an integer. Defaults to 25 if use_tls is False, 465 if use_tls is True.

source_address

The hostname of the client. Defaults to the result of socket.getfqdn(). Note that this call blocks.

timeout

Default timeout value for all operations, in seconds. Defaults to 60.

loop

IOLoop instance to run on. Defaults to asyncio.get_event_loop().

use_tls

If True, make the initial connection to the server over TLS/SSL. Note that if the server supports STARTTLS only, this should be False; see STARTTLS below.

validate_certs

Determines if server certificates are validated if using use_tls. Defaults to True.

client_cert

Path to client side certificate, if one is to be used for the TLS connection.

client_cert

Path to client side key, if one is to be used for the TLS connection.

tls_context

An SSLContext object, used for the TLS connection. Mutually exclusive with client_cert/client_key.

Sending messages

Use SMTP.sendmail to send raw messages. Allowed arguments are:

sender

The address sending this mail.

recipients

A list of addresses to send this mail to. A bare string will be treated as a list with 1 address.

message

The message string to send.

mail_options

List of options (such as ESMTP 8bitmime) for the mail command.

rcpt_options

List of options (such as DSN commands) for all the rcpt commands.

Use SMTP.send_message to send email.message.Message objects.

Timeouts

All commands accept a timeout keyword argument of a numerical value in seconds. This value is used for all socket operations, and will raise STMPTimeoutError if exceeded. Timeout values passed to init or connect will be used as the default value for commands executed on the connection.

The default timeout is 60 seconds.

STARTTLS

Many SMTP servers support the STARTTLS extension over port 587. To connect to one of these, set use_tls to False, and call starttls on the client.

loop = asyncio.get_event_loop()
smtp = aiosmtplib.SMTP(
    hostname='smtp.gmail.com', port=587, loop=loop, use_tls=False)
loop.run_until_complete(smtp.connect())
loop.run_until_complete(smtp.starttls())

Parallel execution

SMTP is a sequential protocol. Multiple commands must be sent to send an email, and they must be sent in the correct sequence. As a consequence of this, executing multiple sendmail tasks in parallell (i.e. with asyncio.gather) is not any more efficient than executing in sequence, as the client must wait until one mail is sent before beginning the next.

If you have a lot of emails to send, consider creating multiple connections (SMTP instances) and splitting the work between them.

Roadmap

aiosmtplib is now feature complete, however test coverage and documentation need a lot of work. Feature requests and bug reports are welcome via Github issues.