How do I send attachments using SMTP?

Question

I want to write a program that sends email using Python\'s smtplib. I searched through the document and the RFCs, but couldn\'t find anything related to attachments. Thus,

Answer 1

Here's an example I snipped out of a work application we did. It creates an HTML email with an Excel attachment.

  import smtplib,email,email.encoders,email.mime.text,email.mime.base

  smtpserver = 'localhost'
  to = ['email@somewhere.com']
  fromAddr = 'automated@hi.com'
  subject = "my subject"

  # create html email
  html = ''
  html +='
...
'
  html += ""
  emailMsg = email.MIMEMultipart.MIMEMultipart('alternative')
  emailMsg['Subject'] = subject
  emailMsg['From'] = fromAddr
  emailMsg['To'] = ', '.join(to)
  emailMsg['Cc'] = ", ".join(cc)
  emailMsg.attach(email.mime.text.MIMEText(html,'html'))

  # now attach the file
  fileMsg = email.mime.base.MIMEBase('application','vnd.ms-excel')
  fileMsg.set_payload(file('exelFile.xls').read())
  email.encoders.encode_base64(fileMsg)
  fileMsg.add_header('Content-Disposition','attachment;filename=anExcelFile.xls')
  emailMsg.attach(fileMsg)

  # send email
  server = smtplib.SMTP(smtpserver)
  server.sendmail(fromAddr,to,emailMsg.as_string())
  server.quit()