Using Tweepy to email myself alerts. But the email content is accumulating every Tweet. I want it to overwrite

Question

I'm using Tweepy and streaming to track Tweets in real time. I'm trying to email the Tweets to myself whenever anyone posts with certain key words:

class StreamCollector(tweepy.Stream):

    def on_status(self, status):
        if not hasattr(status, 'retweeted_status') and status.in_reply_to_screen_name == None and status.is_quote_status == Fal\
se:
            if status.author.followers_count > 10:
                print('Twitter Handle: @'+status.author.screen_name)
                print('Followers:',status.author.followers_count)
                print('Tweet:',status.text)
                print('\n')

                mail_content = 'Tweet: {0}\nFollowers: {1}\nTweet Link: https://twitter.com/{2}/status/{3}'.format(status.text,\
status.author.followers_count,status.author.screen_name,status.id_str)

                message['Subject'] = '@'+status.author.screen_name   #The subject line                                          


                message.attach(MIMEText(mail_content, 'plain')) #Create SMTP session for sending the mail                       
                session = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587) #use gmail with port                                              
                session.starttls() #enable security                                                                             
                session.login(sender_address, sender_pass) #login with mail_id and password                                     

                text = message.as_string()
                session.sendmail(sender_address, receiver_address, text)
                mail_content = []
                session.quit()

stream = StreamCollector(api_key,api_key_secret,access_token, access_token_secret)
stream.filter(track=["trigger words"])

This all works well - except - the mail_content seems to be appended with every new Tweet - but I want it to be overwritten. Currently, each new email contains the mail_content of all the previous Tweets too.

Can anyone explain why this is happening and how I can fix it?

Answer 1

It appears message is reused and you keep doing attach(payload).

Call set_content() instead.

# message.attach(MIMEText(mail_content, 'plain'))  # -
message.set_content(mail_content)                  # +

You should probably create a new message instance each time too.