Nathan Hoad

Outbox.py: An SMTP Client for Humans

May 27, 2012

I like Kenneth Reitz’s requests and inbox packages. They’re simple, and embody the Zen of Python.

What I don’t like is writing code for sending emails - admittedly, it’s not as bad as making requests or receiving email before requests or inbox were around, but the boilerplate for attaching files is ugly, and unnecessary.

So I’ve written outbox, a simple SMTP client for humans. It’s not asychronous like Reitz’s inbox module, but it’s easier to interact with.

The code is very small, with the unit tests being only 9 lines less than that of the code itself, so it can be hacked on pretty easily.

You can install it with pip install outbox or get the source from my bitbucket repository.

If you have some changes you want made to outbox.py, send me a pull request or contact me by email.