astrobase.emailutils module

This is a small utility module to send email using an SMTP server that requires logins. The email settings are stored in a file called .emailsettings that should be located in the ~/.astrobase/ directory in your home directory. This file should have permissions 0600 (so only you can read/write to it), and should contain the following info in a single row, separated by the | character:

<email user>|<email password>|<email server>

Example:

exampleuser@email.com|correcthorsebatterystaple|mail.example.com

NOTE: This assumes the email server uses STARTTLS encryption and listens on SMTP port 587. Most email servers support this.

astrobase.emailutils.send_email(sender, subject, content, email_recipient_list, email_address_list, email_user=None, email_pass=None, email_server=None)[source]

This sends an email to addresses, informing them about events.

The email account settings are retrieved from the settings file as described above.

Parameters:
  • sender (str) – The name of the sender to use in the email header.
  • subject (str) – Subject of the email.
  • content (str) – Content of the email.
  • list (email_recipient) – This is a list of email recipient names of the form: [‘Example Person 1’, ‘Example Person 1’, …]
  • list – This is a list of email recipient addresses of the form: [‘example1@example.com’, ‘example2@example.org’, …]
  • email_user (str) – The username of the email server account that will send the emails. If this is None, the value of EMAIL_USER from the ~/.astrobase/.emailsettings file will be used. If that is None as well, this function won’t work.
  • email_pass (str) – The password of the email server account that will send the emails. If this is None, the value of EMAIL_PASS from the ~/.astrobase/.emailsettings file will be used. If that is None as well, this function won’t work.
  • email_server (str) – The address of the email server that will send the emails. If this is None, the value of EMAIL_USER from the ~/.astrobase/.emailsettings file will be used. If that is None as well, this function won’t work.
Returns:

True if email sending succeeded. False if email sending failed.

Return type:

bool