Python: Sending Email to Multiple Recipients

Question

I'm trying to send email to multiple people using Python.

def getRecipients(fileWithRecipients):
    recipients = []
    f = open(fileWithRecipients, 'r')
    for line in f:
        recipients.append(line)
    return recipients

def test_email():
    gmail_user = "csarankings@gmail.com"
    gmail_pass = getPassword("pass.txt")
    FROM = "csarankings@gmail.com"
    TO = getRecipients("recipients.txt")
    date = getCurrentDate()
    SUBJECT = "Current CSA Rankings: " + date
    TEXT = createEmailMessageFromFile("rankings.txt")

    message = """\From: %s\nTo: %s\nSubject: %s\n\n%s """ % (FROM, ", ".join(TO), SUBJECT, TEXT)

    try:
        server = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
        server.ehlo()
        server.starttls()
        server.login(gmail_user, gmail_pass)
        server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
        server.close()
        print("it worked")
    except:
        print("it failed :(")

For whatever reason, my emails only go to the first recipient in my list of recipients (the TO variable within my test_email() function.

My recipients file just consists of an email address per line (only has two in there at the moment). I thought there might be something wrong with my getRecipients() function, so I just hardcoded two emails into the TO variable and it works for the first email address and not the second.

Any idea why this might be happening? I suspect it has something to do with:

", ".join(TO)

where I set my message variable.

NB: My test_email() is largely based on the most upvoted answer here:

How to send an email with Gmail as provider using Python?

EDIT: For what it's worth, when I hardcode a list of a single email address into the TO variable, the subject displays properly in the email. When I use the getRecipients() function (even with only one email address in the recipients.txt file), it displays this in the body of the email:

Subject: Current CSA Rankings 6/13/15

Not sure if relevant but thought it might be related to the issue.

EDIT_2: I don't think my question is a duplicate of:

How to send email to multiple recipients using python smtplib?

because, while I use the smtplib.sendmail() function, I don't use the email module at all, so our code is very different...

possible duplicate of [How to send email to multiple recipients using python smtplib?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8856117/how-to-send-email-to-multiple-recipients-using-python-smtplib) — MattDMo, Jun 13 '15 at 21:39
@MattDMo Edited my question to answer why I don't think mine's a duplicate — anon_swe, Jun 13 '15 at 21:52
you missed the point. The way you are constructing the `To:` field is incorrect. Read through all the answers and synthesize what they have to say. Perhaps you should look at using the [`email`](https://docs.python.org/2/library/email.html) module to simplify things. The [examples](https://docs.python.org/2/library/email-examples.html) section of the docs may also be useful. — MattDMo, Jun 14 '15 at 00:05

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 20 '17 at 20:50

I was able to do this by iterating over the list of recipients after logging on to the server.

Something like this

    try:
        server = smtplib.SMTP("smtp.gmail.com", 587)
        server.ehlo()
        server.starttls()
        server.login(gmail_user, gmail_pass)
        print('Login successful')
    except:
       print('Login unsuccessful')

And then iterating over list

     for item in List: 
        TO = item
        FROM = gmail_user
        #message as defined above
        try: 
            server.sendmail(FROM, TO, message)
        except:
            print('not sent for' + item)

    server.close()

Wa I just discovered this is the problem. It seems to me the API design is not logical in a sense that it doesn't help me loop through the TO for me. — suvtfopw, Feb 27 '19 at 08:17

Python: Sending Email to Multiple Recipients

1 Answers1