19.1.9. email: Miscellaneous utilities
There are several useful utilities provided in the email.utils module:
-
email.utils.quote(str)
- Return a new string with backslashes in str replaced by two backslashes, and
double quotes replaced by backslash-double quote.
-
email.utils.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.
-
email.utils.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.
-
email.utils.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.
-
email.utils.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)
-
email.utils.parsedate(date)
- Attempts to parse a date according to the rules in RFC 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 RFC 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.
-
email.utils.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) . 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.
-
email.utils.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.
-
email.utils.formatdate([timeval[, localtime][, usegmt]])
Returns a date string as per RFC 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.
New in version 2.4.
-
email.utils.make_msgid([idstring])
- Returns a string suitable for an RFC 2822-compliant
Message-ID header. Optional idstring if given, is a string used
to strengthen the uniqueness of the message id.
-
email.utils.decode_rfc2231(s)
- Decode the string s according to RFC 2231.
-
email.utils.encode_rfc2231(s[, charset[, language]])
- Encode the string s according to RFC 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.
-
email.utils.collapse_rfc2231_value(value[, errors[, fallback_charset]])
When a header parameter is encoded in RFC 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
RFC 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.
-
email.utils.decode_params(params)
- Decode parameters list according to RFC 2231. params is a sequence of
2-tuples containing elements of the form (content-type, string-value).
Changed in version 2.4: The dump_address_pair() function has been removed; use formataddr()
instead.
Changed in version 2.4: The decode() function has been removed; use the
Header.decode_header() method instead.
Changed in version 2.4: The encode() function has been removed; use the Header.encode()
method instead.
Footnotes