You need to offer a valid email address and password to send an email through this recipe. We pass the email server, SMTP port, fromaddress, toaddress, email subject, and email body as the arguments, and receive the password to your email (from) address using the getpass library (so that your email password is not displayed in plain text).

Listing 5.10 gives the simple email client as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env python 
# Python Network Programming Cookbook, Second Edition -- Chapter - 5 
# This program is optimized for Python 2.7.12 and Python 3.5.2. 
# It may run on any other version with/without modifications. 
 
import smtplib 
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart 
from email.mime.text import MIMEText 
import argparse 
import getpass 
 
def mail_client(host, port, fromAddress, password, toAddress, subject, body): 
    msg = MIMEMultipart() 
 
    msg['From'] = fromAddress 
    msg['To'] = toAddress 
    msg['Subject'] = subject 
    message = body 
    msg.attach(MIMEText(message)) 
 
    mailserver = smtplib.SMTP(host,port) 
 
    # Identify to the SMTP Gmail Client 
    mailserver.ehlo() 
 
    # Secure with TLS Encryption 
    mailserver.starttls() 
 
    # Reidentifying as an encrypted connection 
    mailserver.ehlo() 
    mailserver.login(fromAddress, password) 
 
    mailserver.sendmail(fromAddress,toAddress,msg.as_string()) 
    print ("Email sent from:", fromAddress) 
 
    mailserver.quit() 
 
 
 
if __name__ == '__main__': 
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Mail Server Example') 
    parser.add_argument('--host', action="store", 
    dest="host", type=str, required=True) 
    parser.add_argument('--port', action="store", 
    dest="port", type=int, required=True) 
    parser.add_argument('--fromAddress', action="store", 
    dest="fromAddress", type=str, required=True) 
    parser.add_argument('--toAddress', action="store", 
    dest="toAddress", type=str, required=True) 
    parser.add_argument('--subject', action="store", 
    dest="subject", type=str, required=True) 
    parser.add_argument('--body', action="store", 
    dest="body", type=str, required=True) 
    password = getpass.getpass("Enter your Password:") 
    given_args = parser.parse_args() 
    mail_client(given_args.host, given_args.port, 
    given_args.fromAddress, password, given_args.toAddress, 
    given_args.subject, given_args.body) 

This recipe logs in as a simple Python-based email client for your email account, and sends a plain-text email to the toaddress that you have specified. Running this program gives the following output:

$ python 5_10_secure_mail_client.py --host='smtp.gmail.com' --port=587 [email protected] [email protected] -subject="Hi, Hello.." --body="Good to see you all. Keep in touch. Take Care"
python3 5_10_secure_mail_client.py --host='smtp.gmail.com' --port=587 [email protected] [email protected] -subject="Hi, Hello.." --body="Good to see you all. Keep in touch. Take Care"
Enter your Password:
Email sent from: [email protected]
  

The output is indicated by the following screenshot of the console, as well as the email received: