Amazon SES SMTP Python Usage

python smtp amazon-web-services amazon-ses

11,315

Solution 1

I don't think SMTP_SSL works anymore with SES. One must use starttls()

smtp = smtplib.SMTP("email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com")
smtp.starttls()
smtp.login(SESSMTPUSERNAME, SESSMTPPASSWORD)
smtp.sendmail(me, you, msg)

Solution 2

A full example:

import smtplib

user = ''
pw   = ''
host = 'email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com'
port = 465
me   = u'[email protected]'
you  = ('[email protected]',)
body = 'Test'
msg  = ("From: %s\r\nTo: %s\r\n\r\n"
       % (me, ", ".join(you)))

msg = msg + body

s = smtplib.SMTP_SSL(host, port, 'yourdomain')
s.set_debuglevel(1)
s.login(user, pw)

s.sendmail(me, you, msg)

Solution 3

I have determined this problem to be caused by the timing. Because I was executing that code from the command line, the server would timeout. If I put it into a python file and run it, it executes fast enough to ensure the message is sent.

Solution 4

It looks like, AWS SES expects a full cycle with data and all the necessary information and closes the connection in case something is missing.

I just created an example based on the officially AWS SES documentation, reformatted to remove some code smells and switched to SMTP_SLL:

from email.utils import formataddr
from smtplib import SMTP_SSL, SMTPException
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText

# Replace [email protected] with your "From" address.
# This address must be verified.
SENDER = '[email protected]'
SENDERNAME = 'Sender Name'

# Replace [email protected] with a "To" address. If your account
# is still in the sandbox, this address must be verified.
RECIPIENT = '[email protected]'

# Replace smtp_username with your Amazon SES SMTP user name.
USERNAME_SMTP = "AWS_SES_SMTP_USER"

# Replace smtp_password with your Amazon SES SMTP password.
PASSWORD_SMTP = "AWS_SES_SMTP_PWD"

# (Optional) the name of a configuration set to use for this message.
# If you comment out this line, you also need to remove or comment out
# the "X-SES-CONFIGURATION-SET:" header below.
# CONFIGURATION_SET = "ConfigSet"

# If you're using Amazon SES in an AWS Region other than US West (Oregon),
# replace email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com with the Amazon SES SMTP
# endpoint in the appropriate region.
HOST = "email-smtp.us-west-2.amazonaws.com"
PORT = 465

# The subject line of the email.
SUBJECT = 'Amazon SES Test (Python smtplib)'

# The email body for recipients with non-HTML email clients.
BODY_TEXT = ("Amazon SES Test - SSL\r\n"
             "This email was sent through the Amazon SES SMTP "
             "Interface using the Python smtplib package.")

# The HTML body of the email.
BODY_HTML = """<html>
<head></head>
<body>
  <h1>Amazon SES SMTP Email Test - SSL</h1>
  <p>This email was sent with Amazon SES using the
    <a href='https://www.python.org/'>Python</a>
    <a href='https://docs.python.org/3/library/smtplib.html'>
    smtplib</a> library.</p>
</body>
</html>"""

# Create message container - the correct MIME type is multipart/alternative.
msg = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
msg['Subject'] = SUBJECT
msg['From'] = formataddr((SENDERNAME, SENDER))
msg['To'] = RECIPIENT
# Comment or delete the next line if you are not using a configuration set
# msg.add_header('X-SES-CONFIGURATION-SET',CONFIGURATION_SET)

# Record the MIME types of both parts - text/plain and text/html.
part1 = MIMEText(BODY_TEXT, 'plain')
part2 = MIMEText(BODY_HTML, 'html')

# Attach parts into message container.
# According to RFC 2046, the last part of a multipart message, in this case
# the HTML message, is best and preferred.
msg.attach(part1)
msg.attach(part2)

# Try to send the message.
try:
    with SMTP_SSL(HOST, PORT) as server:
        server.login(USERNAME_SMTP, PASSWORD_SMTP)
        server.sendmail(SENDER, RECIPIENT, msg.as_string())
        server.close()
        print("Email sent!")

except SMTPException as e:
    print("Error: ", e)

The YouTuber Codegnan created a nice walkthrough to set up SES and IAM to be able to run the code above.

View more solutions

11,315

Author by

Kevin Dolan

Updated on June 04, 2022

Comments

Kevin Dolan almost 2 years

I am trying to diagnose why sending email through Amazon SES is not working via python.

The following example demonstrates the problem, where user and pass are set to the appropriate credentials.

>>> import smtplib
>>> s = smtplib.SMTP_SSL("email-smtp.us-east-1.amazonaws.com", 465)
>>> s.login(user, pw)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/smtplib.py", line 549, in login
    self.ehlo_or_helo_if_needed()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/smtplib.py", line 510, in ehlo_or_helo_if_needed
    (code, resp) = self.helo()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/smtplib.py", line 372, in helo
    (code,msg)=self.getreply()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.6/smtplib.py", line 340, in getreply
    raise SMTPServerDisconnected("Connection unexpectedly closed")
smtplib.SMTPServerDisconnected: Connection unexpectedly closed

This message is not particularly useful, and have tried other vraiations, but can't seem to get it to work.

I can send email using my thunderbird email client with these settings, so my assumption is that I am mission something TLS-related.

GoYun.Info over 4 years

Is there a better one? This one has to use you and me twice.
andreas over 2 years

This is plain wrong. SMTP_SSL is still working, but needs to be treated differently. I will show in my answer.
jrwren over 2 years

This answer is 13 yrs old. It is quite likely that it was correct 13yrs ago and is not any longer.
Berk about 2 years

How can we set it up to attach a file to the email? I tried to email from aws with an attached file - but it does not work? Shall I need to change somethings in my aws account for attaching file to email?