1 00:00:00,210 --> 00:00:06,250 Welcome to 11:46 in this lesson we're going to learn how to send e-mails from our Python programs. 2 00:00:06,300 --> 00:00:11,610 This can be a great way to send notifications so if you have a program that is doing Web scraping and 3 00:00:11,610 --> 00:00:17,190 checking a Web site over and over again you can have this program then email you whenever it finds some 4 00:00:17,190 --> 00:00:22,440 particular thing that you're looking for or maybe you need to send out e-mails to a bunch of specific 5 00:00:22,440 --> 00:00:29,430 people based on some criteria that you program in like maybe a program that goes through a spreadsheet 6 00:00:29,490 --> 00:00:36,250 and then finds people who are behind on dues or or haven't received a reminder in a while and then just 7 00:00:36,270 --> 00:00:37,590 e-mail them in particular. 8 00:00:37,670 --> 00:00:44,210 This can save you a lot of copying and pasting e-mail addresses into some email program like G-mail 9 00:00:44,290 --> 00:00:44,550 . 10 00:00:44,790 --> 00:00:45,960 Let's get started. 11 00:00:45,960 --> 00:00:54,240 So the protocol that sending e-mail uses is called SMTP simple Mail Transfer Protocol and Python has 12 00:00:54,240 --> 00:00:58,960 an implementation of this protocol in a module called a.p lib. 13 00:00:59,100 --> 00:01:01,170 So there are a lot of different steps to this. 14 00:01:01,260 --> 00:01:06,540 So I'm just going to go through all the steps of sending an email first and then we can later look at 15 00:01:06,540 --> 00:01:08,960 each step in more detail. 16 00:01:08,970 --> 00:01:12,860 So first go ahead and import S-M TPV lib. 17 00:01:12,960 --> 00:01:16,250 This is the simple Mail Transfer Protocol library. 18 00:01:16,270 --> 00:01:22,860 Next we'll have to create a connection object which Ostrat store in a variable called Can the function 19 00:01:22,860 --> 00:01:31,860 we want to call is SMP lib dot S-M T-P in caps and then we'll have a connect to the SMTP server. 20 00:01:31,860 --> 00:01:34,630 This is the domain name of your e-mail server. 21 00:01:34,830 --> 00:01:42,540 So I'm going to use G-mail and there as some to you the server is at SMPTE Dutchie mail dot com. 22 00:01:42,660 --> 00:01:47,320 And then followed by the port number which is usually port 5 8 7. 23 00:01:47,430 --> 00:01:51,000 So we have this connection object. 24 00:01:51,690 --> 00:01:55,140 And now let's go ahead and connect to the server. 25 00:01:55,170 --> 00:02:00,780 So this will actually send out Internet traffic from our Python program. 26 00:02:00,780 --> 00:02:08,150 We're going to call the L-O function which is a lot of history of why it has this weird name it used 27 00:02:08,170 --> 00:02:15,450 be hello with just one L and then that got switched around to L-O and you just know that you have to 28 00:02:15,450 --> 00:02:17,450 call this function to start the connection. 29 00:02:17,460 --> 00:02:20,240 So that's the helo function. 30 00:02:20,250 --> 00:02:29,340 Next you can see that it returned this tuple of an integer which is the code the response code anything 31 00:02:29,340 --> 00:02:31,340 that begins with 200 means OK. 32 00:02:31,350 --> 00:02:33,040 So 250 means Yeah. 33 00:02:33,060 --> 00:02:33,740 OK. 34 00:02:33,750 --> 00:02:34,770 We connected. 35 00:02:35,010 --> 00:02:42,060 And then the second item here this is actually a bite's object and not a string but it can easily be 36 00:02:42,060 --> 00:02:43,420 interpreted as a string. 37 00:02:43,620 --> 00:02:46,070 Bytes are sort of beyond the scope of this lesson. 38 00:02:46,170 --> 00:02:50,480 But here you can see OK it return a semester that said you know everything works great. 39 00:02:50,520 --> 00:02:54,640 So after connecting with Hello we have to start the DNS encryption. 40 00:02:54,660 --> 00:02:58,380 So that way when we send our password it'll be encrypted. 41 00:02:58,380 --> 00:03:01,870 So this return code to 20 that means everything's OK. 42 00:03:01,890 --> 00:03:04,440 And now let's go ahead and log in. 43 00:03:04,540 --> 00:03:08,150 And so we have to call the log in function pass our user name. 44 00:03:08,190 --> 00:03:11,150 So a swaggered at G-mail dot com. 45 00:03:11,400 --> 00:03:14,480 And then the password which is this. 46 00:03:14,820 --> 00:03:20,460 Of course by the time you watch this video I will change this password so don't bother trying to hack 47 00:03:20,460 --> 00:03:22,820 into my e-mail account. 48 00:03:23,160 --> 00:03:28,770 So no we're our script is now logged in and we can start sending e-mails by calling the send mail function 49 00:03:29,020 --> 00:03:29,460 . 50 00:03:29,640 --> 00:03:36,930 So first we'll have to get the from address which will just be a sweigart at gmail dot com and we pass 51 00:03:36,930 --> 00:03:39,060 the two address. 52 00:03:39,060 --> 00:03:42,390 So I'm just going to go ahead and email myself. 53 00:03:42,930 --> 00:03:48,210 Just remember that the first one is the from address which you should make your e-mail address the same 54 00:03:48,210 --> 00:03:52,660 that you logged in with and then the second is who this e-mail is going to. 55 00:03:53,100 --> 00:03:55,260 And then followed by the body of the e-mail. 56 00:03:55,260 --> 00:04:01,500 Now this is kind of complicated because the headers and the body of the e-mail are all crammed into 57 00:04:01,500 --> 00:04:03,660 this string and they follow a certain format. 58 00:04:03,660 --> 00:04:04,510 So here's the format. 59 00:04:04,530 --> 00:04:11,850 First type subject with a capital S colon space and then type in the subject so easily a single line 60 00:04:11,850 --> 00:04:14,060 . 61 00:04:14,370 --> 00:04:19,890 I'll say the subject is so long and will have a newline character that ends the subject and then another 62 00:04:19,890 --> 00:04:21,180 newline character. 63 00:04:21,180 --> 00:04:23,280 That means we're done with the headers. 64 00:04:23,280 --> 00:04:27,800 There are other headers besides subject but I'm just going to talk about the subject header. 65 00:04:28,060 --> 00:04:32,490 So basically we just need these two newline characters and then we'll have the main body of the email 66 00:04:32,490 --> 00:04:32,710 . 67 00:04:32,850 --> 00:04:36,050 So I'll just write an email to myself dear owl. 68 00:04:36,360 --> 00:04:42,550 Now the newline character so long and thanks for all the fish. 69 00:04:42,660 --> 00:04:46,710 New Line new line from Al. 70 00:04:47,430 --> 00:04:54,510 OK and then I'll just press enter and then it sends this email so you can send multiple e-mails at a 71 00:04:54,510 --> 00:04:58,460 time with the sendmail function you can consult the documentation for that. 72 00:04:58,500 --> 00:05:04,560 And the rease the return object and the return value from sendmail is going to be a dictionary that 73 00:05:04,710 --> 00:05:08,160 has all of the e-mails that it failed to send. 74 00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:12,960 So if you get a blank dictionary back that means the e-mails were all sent correctly. 75 00:05:13,050 --> 00:05:19,150 And so we could then send another e-mail by calling the sendmail method again. 76 00:05:19,680 --> 00:05:26,790 But at this point I'm already done so I'll have my script just call quit and that will disconnect me 77 00:05:26,790 --> 00:05:29,890 from the SMTP server. 78 00:05:31,000 --> 00:05:35,730 I can go ahead and check my email right now and see that. 79 00:05:36,160 --> 00:05:37,690 Yep that got e-mailed to me. 80 00:05:38,010 --> 00:05:39,400 OK so that's the entire process. 81 00:05:39,420 --> 00:05:41,670 Let's dive into the details for each part. 82 00:05:41,670 --> 00:05:45,990 This is kind of complicated because there's a lot of different steps you don't have to memorize all 83 00:05:45,990 --> 00:05:46,770 the steps. 84 00:05:46,860 --> 00:05:50,760 Just be familiar with them enough so that you can look at the documentation. 85 00:05:50,760 --> 00:05:54,210 So the first thing we do is import the S.M. T.P. library. 86 00:05:54,210 --> 00:05:55,860 That's pretty standard enough. 87 00:05:56,100 --> 00:06:03,040 And we call this SMTP function passing the domain name and port number. 88 00:06:03,210 --> 00:06:10,740 So the port number for the SMTP protocol is 5 8 7 ports are a part of the Internet address that you're 89 00:06:10,740 --> 00:06:12,400 sending data to. 90 00:06:12,450 --> 00:06:16,790 So it's on this server and then on this port of that server. 91 00:06:16,800 --> 00:06:18,180 So this is a domain name. 92 00:06:18,180 --> 00:06:23,640 If you've ever configured outlook or Thunderbird or some other email client to connect to maybe your 93 00:06:23,640 --> 00:06:27,820 ISP email address you might have gone through a step like this. 94 00:06:27,960 --> 00:06:36,510 So every ISP or e-mail service has their own domain name for for some T-P servers usually just be whatever 95 00:06:36,510 --> 00:06:38,030 their name is dotcom. 96 00:06:38,100 --> 00:06:40,970 But with SMPTE dot in front of it. 97 00:06:41,070 --> 00:06:49,580 So on table 16:1 you can see here's a bunch of very popular e-mail providers such as e-mail or Outlook 98 00:06:49,580 --> 00:06:50,580 or Yahoo. 99 00:06:50,730 --> 00:06:56,450 And here's the S.M. T.P. server domain names in C for AT&T and Verizon. 100 00:06:56,580 --> 00:06:59,040 They use port for 6:5. 101 00:06:59,670 --> 00:07:05,060 So you would enter the integer 4 6 5 here for those next we call the hello method. 102 00:07:05,070 --> 00:07:11,150 Just to connect to that as some server then we just call start tell us to begin encryption. 103 00:07:11,250 --> 00:07:16,560 Most modern email servers will require that you actually start encryption before you can actually log 104 00:07:16,560 --> 00:07:17,170 in. 105 00:07:17,250 --> 00:07:23,390 And then next you'll call the log in method and pass it your your username and password as strings. 106 00:07:23,670 --> 00:07:26,600 And then finally Sendmail will actually send out the emails. 107 00:07:26,640 --> 00:07:31,930 And then when you're all done you can call the quit method to disconnect. 108 00:07:31,950 --> 00:07:37,320 One thing to keep in mind if you're using Gmail Google has a thing called application specific passwords 109 00:07:37,320 --> 00:07:37,800 . 110 00:07:38,010 --> 00:07:42,690 That means that your typical Google account password isn't going to be the one that you log in with 111 00:07:42,690 --> 00:07:43,620 here. 112 00:07:43,650 --> 00:07:45,390 In fact you have to go ahead and 113 00:07:48,690 --> 00:07:52,830 look up Google Apps specific password 114 00:07:56,550 --> 00:08:00,470 and you can find details for generating an application specific password. 115 00:08:00,510 --> 00:08:07,230 This is so that you can create a password for say Python programs or for your phone or if your TV logs 116 00:08:07,230 --> 00:08:09,250 into your email account or whatever. 117 00:08:09,390 --> 00:08:14,910 And that way if you have to change one of the passwords you won't have to change your password on multiple 118 00:08:14,910 --> 00:08:21,150 devices because each device will have its own password and then calling the sendmail method will actually 119 00:08:21,150 --> 00:08:22,400 send out the e-mail. 120 00:08:22,410 --> 00:08:27,270 Now note that a lot of e-mail providers in order to prevent people from you know writing Python scripts 121 00:08:27,270 --> 00:08:34,590 that could spam millions of people a day will usually limit you at I think Gmail has a limit of about 122 00:08:34,590 --> 00:08:37,130 100 or 150 emails per day. 123 00:08:37,140 --> 00:08:40,580 Other providers might have a limit of five hundred or a thousand per day. 124 00:08:40,650 --> 00:08:45,450 Basically if you have to e-mail out thousands of e-mails every day you should probably look into an 125 00:08:45,450 --> 00:08:49,460 actual commercial mailing list service. 126 00:08:49,560 --> 00:08:50,970 So that's the entire process. 127 00:08:50,970 --> 00:08:54,620 To recap first you just import SMTP lib. 128 00:08:54,750 --> 00:09:02,010 Then you call the S-M T-P function passing it the domain name of your e-mail providers SMPTE server 129 00:09:02,030 --> 00:09:02,460 . 130 00:09:02,970 --> 00:09:10,920 Then call a low then call start T.L. less than call log in with your password and username and then 131 00:09:10,920 --> 00:09:17,850 call Sendmail with the from 2 and body strings of the e-mail. 132 00:09:17,850 --> 00:09:22,770 Remember that in order to have the subject you need to have subject colon space then the subject line 133 00:09:22,950 --> 00:09:27,060 followed by two new line characters before the main part of the email is sent