Sending email via gmail & python

Question

What is the recommended way of sending emails with gmail and python?

There are a lot of SO threads, but most are old and also smtp with username & password is n

Answer 1

I modified this as follows to work with Python3, inspired by Python Gmail API 'not JSON serializable'

import httplib2
import os
import oauth2client
from oauth2client import client, tools
import base64
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from apiclient import errors, discovery

SCOPES = 'https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.send'
CLIENT_SECRET_FILE = 'client_secret.json'
APPLICATION_NAME = 'Gmail API Python Send Email'

def get_credentials():
    home_dir = os.path.expanduser('~')
    credential_dir = os.path.join(home_dir, '.credentials')
    if not os.path.exists(credential_dir):
        os.makedirs(credential_dir)
    credential_path = os.path.join(credential_dir, 'gmail-python-email-send.json')
    store = oauth2client.file.Storage(credential_path)
    credentials = store.get()
    if not credentials or credentials.invalid:
        flow = client.flow_from_clientsecrets(CLIENT_SECRET_FILE, SCOPES)
        flow.user_agent = APPLICATION_NAME
        credentials = tools.run_flow(flow, store)
        print('Storing credentials to ' + credential_path)
    return credentials

def SendMessage(sender, to, subject, msgHtml, msgPlain):
    credentials = get_credentials()
    http = credentials.authorize(httplib2.Http())
    service = discovery.build('gmail', 'v1', http=http)
    message1 = CreateMessage(sender, to, subject, msgHtml, msgPlain)
    SendMessageInternal(service, "me", message1)

def SendMessageInternal(service, user_id, message):
    try:
        message = (service.users().messages().send(userId=user_id, body=message).execute())
        print('Message Id: %s' % message['id'])
        return message
    except errors.HttpError as error:
        print('An error occurred: %s' % error)

def CreateMessage(sender, to, subject, msgHtml, msgPlain):
    msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
    msg['Subject'] = subject
    msg['From'] = sender
    msg['To'] = to
    msg.attach(MIMEText(msgPlain, 'plain'))
    msg.attach(MIMEText(msgHtml, 'html'))
    raw = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(msg.as_bytes())
    raw = raw.decode()
    body = {'raw': raw}
    return body

def main():
    to = "to@address.com"
    sender = "from@address.com"
    subject = "subject"
    msgHtml = "Hi
Html Email"
    msgPlain = "Hi\nPlain Email"
    SendMessage(sender, to, subject, msgHtml, msgPlain)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()