How do I schedule an email to send at a certain time using cron and smtp, in python?

Question

So far I have only been able to send emails. Here's my code:

import smtplib

email_user = 'myemail@gmail.com'
server = smtplib.SMTP ('smtp.gmail.com', 587)
server.starttls()
server.login(email_user, 'email pass')

#SET TIME HERE?
from crontab import CronTab

#EMAIL
message = 'sending this from python!'
server.sendmail(email_user, email_user, message)
server.quit()

I'm struggling to set a time to send the email. If someone can also help me figure out how to add attachments, that would be great!

Answer 1

Assuming you already have your send_email() function working I would do:

import datetime as dt
import time
import smtplib

def send_email():
    email_user = 'myemail@gmail.com'
    server = smtplib.SMTP ('smtp.gmail.com', 587)
    server.starttls()
    server.login(email_user, 'email pass')

    #EMAIL
    message = 'sending this from python!'
    server.sendmail(email_user, email_user, message)
    server.quit()

send_time = dt.datetime(2018,8,26,3,0,0) # set your sending time in UTC
time.sleep(send_time.timestamp() - time.time())
send_email()
print('email sent')

If you want to send the email regularly, you can do:

import datetime as dt
import time
import smtplib

def send_email():
    email_user = 'myemail@gmail.com'
    server = smtplib.SMTP ('smtp.gmail.com', 587)
    server.starttls()
    server.login(email_user, 'email pass')

    #EMAIL
    message = 'sending this from python!'
    server.sendmail(email_user, email_user, message)
    server.quit()

def send_email_at(send_time):
    time.sleep(send_time.timestamp() - time.time())
    send_email()
    print('email sent')

first_email_time = dt.datetime(2018,8,26,3,0,0) # set your sending time in UTC
interval = dt.timedelta(minutes=2*60) # set the interval for sending the email

send_time = first_email_time
while True:
    send_email_at(send_time)
    send_time = send_time + interval

You can also spawn a thread and leave this thread handle the sending of the email.