notifymail allows scripts to send email to a preconfigured address. It is particularly useful for unattended and scheduled scripts to report their status to an administrator.

notifymail is designed to be very easy to install and use. I wrote it because I couldn't figure out how to configure the built-in sendmail command to forward emails appropriately and I couldn't get the similar ssmtp package to work.

• OS X or Linux
• Python 2.7 or 3.4
• An email account

$ pip install notifymail  # or pip3 (for Python 3.x)

You must know the SMTP settings of your email provider, which can typically looked up on your provider's website. For example here are Gmail's SMTP settings, obtained with a internet search for "gmail SMTP settings":

• Gmail SMTP Server: smtp.gmail.com
• Gmail SMTP Port: 587 (for TLS)
• Gmail SMTP Uses TLS? yes

Usually your SMTP username will be the same as your email address, and your SMTP password will be the same as your email password.

Once you have the settings in hand, run the notifymail.py --setup command:

$ notifymail.py --setup
SMTP Server Hostname: smtp.gmail.com
SMTP Server Port [465]: 587
SMTP Server Uses TLS (y/n) [n]: yes
SMTP Username: robot@gmail.com
SMTP Password: ********
From Address [robot@gmail.com]: robot@gmail.com
From Name (optional) []: notifymail
To Address: admin@example.com

Verifying connection to SMTP server... OK

$ echo "Hello World" | notifymail.py -s "Subject"

notifymail will read the message body from standard input and allow you to specify a subject line with the -s option. You may also specify a custom sender name using the --from-name option.

In Python 2 the encoding of the message body and all arguments is assumed to be UTF-8. In Python 3 the encoding of both is autodetected in the usual fashion.

Full usage information:

Usage: notifymail.py --setup | -s SUBJECT [-b BODY] [--from-name NAME] | --probe

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --setup               setup mail server configuration
  --probe               check whether mail server is reachable
  -s SUBJECT, --subject=SUBJECT
                        subject line. Required.
  -b BODY, --body=BODY  body. Read from standard input if omitted.
  --from-name=NAME      sender name. Overrides the default sender name.

import notifymail
notifymail.send('Subject', 'Hello World')

String arguments can be either Unicode strings or UTF-8 encoded bytestrings.

Just execute the notifymail command using your language's normal API for running system commands.

For example, in Ruby:

require 'open3'

Open3.popen3('notifymail.py', '-s', 'Subject') {|stdin, stdout, stderr, wait_thr|
  stdin.puts('Hello World!')
  stdin.close
  
  exit_code = wait_thr.value.to_i
  if exit_code != 0
    raise "notifymail exited with error code #{exit_code}."
  end
}

For example, in Java:

import java.io.*;

try {
    Process notifymail = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(new String[] {
        "notifymail.py", "-s", "Subject" });
    PrintStream stdin = new PrintStream(
        notifymail.getOutputStream(), /*autoFlush=*/false, "UTF-8");
    
    stdin.println("Hello World!");
    stdin.close();
    
    int exitCode = notifymail.waitFor();
    if (exitCode != 0) {
        throw new Exception("notifymail exited with error code " + exitCode + ".");
    }
} catch (Exception e) {
    throw new RuntimeException("Unable to send email.", e);
}

• The configured SMTP settings are stored in plaintext, including the SMTP password.

This code is provided under the MIT License.

• 1.1
  • Add support for Python 3.4. Remove support for Python 2.6.
  • Fix --from-name to actually work.
  • Fix --setup to not print usage info after completing setup.
• 1.0
  • Initial version.