flask-mail
======================================

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.

Links
-----

* `documentation <http://packages.python.org/Flask-Mail/>`_
* `source <http://github.com/mattupstate/flask-mail>`_

Installing Flask-Mail
---------------------

Install with **pip** and **easy_install**::

    pip install Flask-Mail

or download the latest version from version control::

    git clone https://github.com/mattupstate/flask-mail.git
    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).

Configuring Flask-Mail
----------------------

**Flask-Mail** is configured through the standard Flask config API. These are the available
options (each is explained later in the documentation):

* **MAIL_SERVER** : default **'localhost'**

* **MAIL_PORT** : default **25**

* **MAIL_USE_TLS** : default **False**

* **MAIL_USE_SSL** : default **False**

* **MAIL_DEBUG** : default **app.debug**

* **MAIL_USERNAME** : default **None**

* **MAIL_PASSWORD** : default **None**

* **MAIL_DEFAULT_SENDER** : default **None**

* **MAIL_MAX_EMAILS** : default **None**

* **MAIL_SUPPRESS_SEND** : default **app.testing**

* **MAIL_ASCII_ATTACHMENTS** : default **False**

In addition the standard Flask ``TESTING`` configuration option is used by **Flask-Mail**
in unit tests (see below).

Emails are managed through a ``Mail`` instance::

    from flask import Flask
    from flask_mail import Mail

    app = Flask(__name__)
    mail = Mail(app)

In this case all emails are sent using the configuration values of the application that
was passed to the ``Mail`` class constructor.

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)

In this case emails will be sent using the configuration values from Flask's ``current_app``
context global. This is useful if you have multiple applications running in the same
process but with different configuration options.


Sending messages
----------------

To send a message first create a ``Message`` instance::

    from flask_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 ``MAIL_DEFAULT_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)


Bulk emails
-----------

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.

Some mail servers set a limit on the number of emails sent in a single connection. You can set the max amount
of emails to send before reconnecting by specifying the **MAIL_MAX_EMAILS** setting.

Attachments
-----------

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.

If ``MAIL_ASCII_ATTACHMENTS`` is set to **True**, filenames will be converted to
an ASCII equivalent. This can be useful when using a mail relay that modify mail
content and mess up Content-Disposition specification when filenames are UTF-8
encoded. The conversion to ASCII is a basic removal of non-ASCII characters. It
should be fine for any unicode character that can be decomposed by NFKD into one
or more ASCII characters. If you need romanization/transliteration (i.e `ß` →
`ss`) then your application should do it and pass a proper ASCII string.


Unit tests and suppressing emails
---------------------------------

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 actually sent.

Alternatively outside a testing environment you can set ``MAIL_SUPPRESS_SEND`` to **False**. This
will have the same effect.

However, it's still useful to keep track of emails that would have been
sent when you are writing unit tests.

In order to keep track of dispatched emails, use the ``record_messages``
method::

    with mail.record_messages() as outbox:

        mail.send_message(subject='testing',
                          body='test',
                          recipients=emails)

        assert len(outbox) == 1
        assert outbox[0].subject == "testing"

The **outbox** is a list of ``Message`` instances sent.

The blinker package must be installed for this method to work.

Note that the older way of doing things, appending the **outbox** to
the ``g`` object, is now deprecated.


Header injection
----------------

To prevent `header injection <http://www.nyphp.org/PHundamentals/8_Preventing-Email-Header-Injection>`_ attempts to send
a message with newlines in the subject, sender or recipient addresses will result in a ``BadHeaderError``.

Signalling support
------------------

**Flask-Mail** now provides signalling support through a ``email_dispatched`` signal. This is sent whenever an email is
dispatched (even if the email is not actually sent, i.e. in a testing environment).

A function connecting to the ``email_dispatched`` signal takes a ``Message`` instance as a first argument, and the Flask
app instance as an optional argument::

    def log_message(message, app):
        app.logger.debug(message.subject)

    email_dispatched.connect(log_message)


API
---

The API documentation can be read using ``pydoc flask_mail``.

.. _Flask: http://flask.pocoo.org
.. _GitHub: http://github.com/mattupstate/flask-mail