python: how to send mail with TO, CC and BCC?

Question

I need for testing purposes to populate few hundred email boxes with various messages, and was going to use smtplib for that. But among other things I need to be able to send messages not only TO specific mailboxes, but CC and BCC them as well. It does not look like smtplib supports CC-ing and BCC-ing while sending emails.

Looking for suggestions how to do CC or BCC sending messages from the python script.

(And — no, I'm not creating a script to spam anyone outside of my testing environment.)

Answer 1

Key thing is to add the recipients as a list of email ids in your sendmail call.

import smtplib
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart

me = "[e-mail]"
to = "[e-mail]"
cc = "[e-mail],[e-mail]"
bcc = "[e-mail],[e-mail]"

rcpt = cc.split(",") + bcc.split(",") + [to]
msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
msg['Subject'] = "my subject"
msg['To'] = to
msg['Cc'] = cc
msg['Bcc'] = bcc
msg.attach(my_msg_body)
server = smtplib.SMTP("localhost") # or your smtp server
server.sendmail(me, rcpt, msg.as_string())
server.quit()

Answer 2

Don't add the bcc header.

See this: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/email-sig/2004-September/000151.html

And this: """Notice that the second argument to sendmail(), the recipients, is passed as a list. You can include any number of addresses in the list to have the message delivered to each of them in turn. Since the envelope information is separate from the message headers, you can even BCC someone by including them in the method argument but not in the message header.""" from http://pymotw.com/2/smtplib

toaddr = '[e-mail]'
cc = ['[e-mail]','[e-mail]']
bcc = ['[e-mail]']
fromaddr = '[e-mail]'
message_subject = "disturbance in sector 7"
message_text = "Three are dead in an attack in the sewers below sector 7."
message = "From: %s\r\n" % fromaddr
    + "To: %s\r\n" % toaddr
    + "CC: %s\r\n" % ",".join(cc)
    # don't add this, otherwise "to and cc" receivers will know who are the bcc receivers
    # + "BCC: %s\r\n" % ",".join(bcc)
    + "Subject: %s\r\n" % message_subject
    + "\r\n" 
    + message_text
toaddrs = [toaddr] + cc + bcc
server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.sunnydale.k12.ca.us')
server.set_debuglevel(1)
server.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddrs, message)
server.quit()

Answer 3

It did not worked for me until i created:

#created cc string
cc = ""[e-mail];
#added cc to header
msg['Cc'] = cc

and than added cc in recipient [list] like:

s.sendmail(me, [you,cc], msg.as_string())

Answer 4

Email headers don't matter to the smtp server. Just add the CC and BCC recipients to the toaddrs when you send your email. For CC, add them to the CC header.

toaddr = '[e-mail]'
cc = ['[e-mail]','[e-mail]']
bcc = ['[e-mail]']
fromaddr = '[e-mail]'
message_subject = "disturbance in sector 7"
message_text = "Three are dead in an attack in the sewers below sector 7."
message = "From: %s\r\n" % fromaddr
        + "To: %s\r\n" % toaddr
        + "CC: %s\r\n" % ",".join(cc)
        + "Subject: %s\r\n" % message_subject
        + "\r\n" 
        + message_text
toaddrs = [toaddr] + cc + bcc
server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.sunnydale.k12.ca.us')
server.set_debuglevel(1)
server.sendmail(fromaddr, toaddrs, message)
server.quit()

Answer 5

You can try MIMEText

msg = MIMEText('text')
msg['to'] = 
msg['cc'] = 

then send msg.as_string()

http://docs.python.org/library/email-examples.html

Answer 6

The distinction between TO, CC and BCC occurs only in the text headers. At the SMTP level, everybody is a recipient.

TO - There is a TO: header with this recipient's address

CC - There is a CC: header with this recipient's address

BCC - This recipient isn't mentioned in the headers at all, but is still a recipient.

If you have

TO: [e-mail]
CC: [e-mail]
BCC: [e-mail]

You have three recipients. The headers in the email body will include only the TO: and CC: