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How to Send Emails in Django

In most customer-driven web applications, there may be a need to send an email. Sending an email with Django is quite simple.  In the first part of this tutorial, we will quickly set up a new Django project from scratch with some URLs, views and templates.

Then, we will take a look at configuring the Google SMTP service provider and finally how to use the send_mail() function in Django which helps us send emails.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need a Google account. If you don't have one, follow this link to create a new Google account.

Prior knowledge of Django is also required.

Project Setup and Overview

Open your terminal or command prompt, and run the following commands:

mkdir mail && cd mail

pipenv install django

pipenv shell

We created a new virtual environment using the pipenv command.

You can install Pipenv if you don't have it installed using the command below.

pip install pipenv

Next, create a new Python project and application.

django-admin startproject send_mail .

python manage.py startapp mailer

python manage.py migrate

python manage.py runserver

Navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ using your browser. You should see the default Django homepage.

Django homepage

Add the new application to your settings.py file.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',

    # new
    'mailer.apps.MailerConfig',
]

Update your project's send_mail/urls.py to look like this:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include # new

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', include('mailer.urls')), # new
]

Then create a new file inside the mailer directory called urls.py and add the following code:

from django.urls import path
from .views import sendMail

urlpatterns = [
    path('', sendMail),
]

Create a new file in your mailer directory called forms.py and add the following code:

from django import forms

class EmailForm(forms.Form):
    recipient = forms.EmailField()
    message = forms.CharField(widget=forms.Textarea)

What's happening here?

We created a form class that inherits from the Form base class. We then created two attributes (recipient and message) that we want to be displayed in our form.

Based on the attributes configuration, Django will determine how to generate the HTML for these fields and how to validate the fields.

Next, let's update the views.py of our mailer application to look like this:

from django.shortcuts import render
from .forms import EmailForm
from django.core.mail import send_mail
from django.conf import settings


def sendMail(request):

    # create a variable to keep track of the form
    messageSent = False

    # check if form has been submitted
    if request.method == 'POST':

        form = EmailForm(request.POST)

        # check if data from the form is clean
        if form.is_valid():
            cd = form.cleaned_data
            subject = "Sending an email with Django"
            message = cd['message']

            # send the email to the recipent
            send_mail(subject, message,
                      settings.DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL, [cd['recipient']])

            # set the variable initially created to True
            messageSent = True

    else:
        form = EmailForm()

    return render(request, 'index.html', {

        'form': form,
        'messageSent': messageSent,

    })

What's happening here?

We created a function called sendMail. We then checked if the form was submitted. If it was, we validate the user input, send the mail and then return True

Finally, if the form was not submitted we return an empty form or if the form has some errors we send the errors back for the form input to be corrected

Also, take note of the send_email() function. It takes three required arguments. The subject, followed by the message, the sender and finally the list of recipients.

Next, create a new templates folder in your mailer application and inside a file called index.html, and add the following code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <link
      href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/bootstrap@5.0.2/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css"
      rel="stylesheet"
      integrity="sha384-EVSTQN3/azprG1Anm3QDgpJLIm9Nao0Yz1ztcQTwFspd3yD65VohhpuuCOmLASjC"
      crossorigin="anonymous"
    />
    <title>Send Email</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    {% if messageSent %}
    <div class="container">
      <h3><strong>Email successfully sent</strong></h3>
      <p>Your message was successfully sent to {{ form.cleaned_data.to }}</p>
    </div>
    {% else %}
    <div class="container">
      <h3><strong>Send E-mail</strong></h3>

      <form method="post">
        {% csrf_token %} {{ form.as_p }}
        <br />
        <div class="text-center">
          <input
            type="submit"
            class="btn btn-secondary"
            style="width: 100%"
            value="Send e-mail"
          />
        </div>
      </form>
    </div>
    {% endif %}
  </body>
</html>

What's happening here?

We are checking if the variable messageSent is True. If so, we show a success message. Otherwise, we display an empty form for the users to fill out.

We have now successfully set up our project. In the following section, we will turn our attention to actual sending emails with Google Gmail SMTP provider.

To test that all works well, update your settings.py file and add these configurations:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend'

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'test@test.com'

Open the app and try submitting the form. The email should be printed out in your console.

Configuring Google Gmail SMTP provider.

To use your Google Gmail account to send an email, you will need to enable access for less secure applications using this link.

Google Less Secure Homepage

Note that Google accounts with the 2-step Verification turned on don't work with secure apps. Instead, you use app passwords. You can generate an app password using this link.

Sending emails with Google Gmail SMTP provider

To complete the process of sending emails using Google Gmail SMTP provider, you have to update and add some additional settings to your project with your Google Gmail account details!

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = '<paste your gmail account here>'

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '<paste your gmail account here>'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = '<paste Google password or app password here>'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

Note that some of the details like the account and password should be kept hidden. This can be achieved by setting them as environment variables. A very good third-party application to achieve this is django-environ

At this point, we are ready to send the emails. Open the app and try sending out some emails.

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