Python adding escape characters to email attachment name

Question

So, I'm relatively new to python and I'm trying to send email with attachments. I'm using the guide described on StackOverflow here: How to send email attachments with Python

I'm using the following code to attach files...

for f in glob.glob('./*/*'):
    path = f.split('/')

    with open(f, "rb") as fil:
        msg.attach(MIMEApplication(
            fil.read(),
            Content_Disposition = 'attachment; filename="' + path[-1] + '"'
        ))
server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com:587')
server.ehlo()
server.starttls()
server.login(username,password)
server.sendmail(emailFrom, emailTo, msg.as_string())
server.quit()

When I receive the email, the attachments are all called "noname". If I open the original email in Gmail, it shows the attachments as follows:

Content-Type: application/octet-stream; Content-Disposition="attachment;
    filename=\"Daily Report.txt\""

Why is the name not coming through properly?

Have you tried this: `Content_Disposition = 'attachment; filename=\'' + path[-1] + '\''` — akshay, May 05 '15 at 18:32
You found the bug in the accepted answer of the question to which you link. You should have used this unaccepted answer instead: http://stackoverflow.com/a/16509278/8747 — Robᵩ, May 05 '15 at 19:09

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 05 '15 at 18:42

3

For reasons completely lost on me, the following code works. Seems like it's doing the same thing, though. Anybody know what's going on?

for f in glob.glob('./*/*'):
    path = f.split('/')

    with open(f, 'rb') as fil:
        submsg = MIMEApplication(fil.read())
        submsg.add_header('Content-Disposition', 'attachment', filename = path[-1])

        msg.attach(submsg)

answered May 05 '15 at 18:42

John Chrysostom

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1

From [the docs](https://docs.python.org/2/library/email.mime.html#email.mime.base.MIMEBase), "The MIMEBase class always adds a Content-Type header (based on _maintype_, _subtype_, and _params_),` Why they designed the API this way is beyond me, but all keyword parameters to any MIME constructor are added to Content-Type. – Robᵩ May 05 '15 at 19:04

Python adding escape characters to email attachment name

1 Answers1