email.utils
There are several useful utilities provided in the email.utils
module:
quote(str)
Return a new string with backslashes in str replaced by two backslashes, and double quotes replaced by backslash-double quote.
unquote(str)
Return a new string which is an unquoted version of str. If str ends and begins with double quotes, they are stripped off. Likewise if str ends and begins with angle brackets, they are stripped off.
parseaddr(address)
Parse address -- which should be the value of some address-containing field such as To
or Cc
-- into its constituent realname and email address parts. Returns a tuple of that information, unless the parse fails, in which case a 2-tuple of ('', '')
is returned.
formataddr(pair)
The inverse of parseaddr
, this takes a 2-tuple of the form (realname, email_address)
and returns the string value suitable for a To
or Cc
header. If the first element of pair is false, then the second element is returned unmodified.
getaddresses(fieldvalues)
This method returns a list of 2-tuples of the form returned by parseaddr()
. fieldvalues is a sequence of header field values as might be returned by Message.get_all
. Here's a simple example that gets all the recipients of a message:
from email.utils import getaddresses
tos = msg.get_all('to', [])
ccs = msg.get_all('cc', [])
resent_tos = msg.get_all('resent-to', [])
resent_ccs = msg.get_all('resent-cc', [])
all_recipients = getaddresses(tos + ccs + resent_tos + resent_ccs)
parsedate(date)
Attempts to parse a date according to the rules in 2822
. however, some mailers don't follow that format as specified, so parsedate
tries to guess correctly in such cases. date is a string containing an 2822
date, such as "Mon, 20 Nov 1995 19:12:08 -0500"
. If it succeeds in parsing the date, parsedate
returns a 9-tuple that can be passed directly to time.mktime
; otherwise None
will be returned. Note that indexes 6, 7, and 8 of the result tuple are not usable.
parsedate_tz(date)
Performs the same function as parsedate
, but returns either None
or a 10-tuple; the first 9 elements make up a tuple that can be passed directly to time.mktime
, and the tenth is the offset of the date's timezone from UTC (which is the official term for Greenwich Mean Time)1. If the input string has no timezone, the last element of the tuple returned is None
. Note that indexes 6, 7, and 8 of the result tuple are not usable.
mktime_tz(tuple)
Turn a 10-tuple as returned by parsedate_tz
into a UTC timestamp. It the timezone item in the tuple is None
, assume local time. Minor deficiency: mktime_tz
interprets the first 8 elements of tuple as a local time and then compensates for the timezone difference. This may yield a slight error around changes in daylight savings time, though not worth worrying about for common use.
formatdate([timeval[, localtime][, usegmt]])
Returns a date string as per 2822
, e.g.:
Fri, 09 Nov 2001 01:08:47 -0000
Optional timeval if given is a floating point time value as accepted by time.gmtime
and time.localtime
, otherwise the current time is used.
Optional localtime is a flag that when True
, interprets timeval, and returns a date relative to the local timezone instead of UTC, properly taking daylight savings time into account. The default is False
meaning UTC is used.
Optional usegmt is a flag that when True
, outputs a date string with the timezone as an ascii string GMT
, rather than a numeric -0000
. This is needed for some protocols (such as HTTP). This only applies when localtime is False
. The default is False
.
2.4
make_msgid([idstring])
Returns a string suitable for an 2822
-compliant Message-ID
header. Optional idstring if given, is a string used to strengthen the uniqueness of the message id.
decode_rfc2231(s)
Decode the string s according to 2231
.
encode_rfc2231(s[, charset[, language]])
Encode the string s according to 2231
. Optional charset and language, if given is the character set name and language name to use. If neither is given, s is returned as-is. If charset is given but language is not, the string is encoded using the empty string for language.
collapse_rfc2231_value(value[, errors[, fallback_charset]])
When a header parameter is encoded in 2231
format, Message.get_param
may return a 3-tuple containing the character set, language, and value. collapse_rfc2231_value
turns this into a unicode string. Optional errors is passed to the errors argument of the built-in unicode
function; it defaults to replace
. Optional fallback_charset specifies the character set to use if the one in the 2231
header is not known by Python; it defaults to us-ascii
.
For convenience, if the value passed to collapse_rfc2231_value
is not a tuple, it should be a string and it is returned unquoted.
decode_params(params)
Decode parameters list according to 2231
. params is a sequence of 2-tuples containing elements of the form (content-type, string-value)
.
2.4 The dump_address_pair
function has been removed; use formataddr
instead.
2.4 The decode
function has been removed; use the Header.decode_header
method instead.
2.4 The encode
function has been removed; use the Header.encode
method instead.
Footnotes
Note that the sign of the timezone offset is the opposite of the sign of the
time.timezone
variable for the same timezone; the latter variable follows the POSIX standard while this module follows2822
.↩