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Input / Output

message

Message / body text. If no string is set, message gets read. Besides, when "Content-Transfer-Encoding" is set to "base64" or "quoted-printable", it gets decoded (useful when quickly reading an EML file content cat file.eml | envelope --message).

  • --message: String. Empty to read.
  • --input: (CLI only) Path to the message file. (Alternative to the --message parameter.)
  • .message(): Read current message in str.
  • .message(text): Set the message to any attainable contents.
  • .message(path=None, alternative="auto", boundary=None)
    • path: Path to the file.
    • alternative: "auto", "html", "plain" You may specify e-mail text alternative. Some e-mail readers prefer to display plain text version over HTML. By default, we try to determine content type automatically (see mime).
    • boundary: When specifying alternative, you may set e-mail boundary if you do not wish a random one to be created.
  • .body(path=None): Alias of .message (without alternative and boundary parameter)
  • .text(path=None): Alias of .message (without alternative and boundary parameter)
  • Envelope(message=): Any attainable contents

Setting alternative:

print(Envelope().message("He<b>llo</b>").message("Hello", alternative="plain"))

# (output shortened)
# Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
#  boundary="===============0590677381100492396=="
#
# --===============0590677381100492396==
# Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
# Hello
#
# --===============0590677381100492396==
# Content-Type: text/html; charset="utf-8"
# He<b>llo</b>

Equivalents for setting a string (in Python and in Bash).

Envelope(message="hello") == Envelope().message("hello")

envelope --message "hello"

Equivalents for setting contents of a file (in Python and in Bash).

from pathlib import Path
Envelope(message=Path("file.txt")) == Envelope(message=open("file.txt")) == Envelope.message(path="file.txt")

envelope --input file.txt

Envelope is sometimes able to handle wrong encoding or tries to print out a meaningful warning.

# Issue a warning when trying to represent a mal-encoded message.
b ="€".encode("cp1250")  # converted to bytes b'\x80'
e = Envelope(b)
repr(e)
# WARNING: Cannot decode the message correctly, plain alternative bytes are not in Unicode.
# Envelope(message="b'\x80'")

# When trying to output a mal-encoded message, we end up with a ValueError exception.
e.message()
# ValueError: Cannot decode the message correctly, it is not in Unicode. b'\x80'

# Setting up an encoding (even ex-post) solves the issue.
e.header("Content-Type", "text/plain;charset=cp1250")
e.message()  # '€'

output

Path to file to be written to (else the contents is returned).

  • --output
  • .output(output_file)
  • Envelope(output=)