genemail 0.1.7

A templated email generation library

Warning

2013/07/29: genemail is in its very early stages - you should come back later.

genemail makes creating and sending templated email easier. The following features are built-in:

• Automatic html-to-text conversion so that all generated emails have both a plain-text and an HTML version. Note that if the auto- conversion is not sufficient, each version can have it’s own template.

• Automatic inlining of CSS for maximum backward compatibility with old and/or problematic email clients.

• Automatic attachment management allows a common email template to specify default attachments; additional attachments can be added to individual emails.

• Support for DKIM email header generation so that emails that are indeed not spam are less likely to be identified as such.

• Preview data allows templates to define sample data so that email previews can be generated with predefined data and/or dynamic data.

• Unit of test for generated emails is made easier thanks to a sender mechanism that allows outbound emails to be trapped for analysis instead of being delivered.

TL;DR

Install:

$ pip install genemail

Given the following package file structure:

-- mypackage/
   `-- templates/
       `-- email/
           |-- logo.png
           |-- invite.html
           |-- invite.spec         # if missing: defaults are used
           |     Example content:
           |       attachments:
           |         - name:  logo.png
           |           value: !include-raw logo.png
           |           cid:   true
           `-- invite.text         # if missing: auto-generated from .html

Use genemail as follows:

import genemail, templatealchemy as ta

# configure a genemail manager that uses the local SMTP server
# and uses mako templates from a python package named 'mypackage'
manager = genemail.Manager(
  sender   = genemail.SmtpSender(host='localhost', port='25'),
  provider = ta.Manager(
    source   = 'pkg:mypackage:templates/email',
    renderer = 'mako'),
  modifier = genemail.DkimModifier(
    selector = 'selector._domainkey.example.com',
    key      = '/path/to/private-rsa.key',
    )
  )

# get an email template object
eml = manager.newEmail('invite')

# set some parameters that will be used by mako to render the
# template
eml['givenname'] = 'Joe'
eml['surname']   = 'Schmoe'

# add an ICS calendar invite
eml.addAttachment(
  name        = 'invite.ics',
  value       = create_invite(...),
  contentType = 'text/calendar; name=invite.ics; method=PUBLISH')

# and send the email
eml.send()

# the resulting email will:
#   - have two alternative formats (text/plain and text/html)
#   - have one top-level attachment (text/calendar)
#   - have one text/html related attachment (logo.png)
#   - be DKIM-signed

Overview

TODO: add docs