/Doc/library/email.encoders.rst

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  1. :mod:`email`: Encoders
  2. ----------------------
  3. .. module:: email.encoders
  4. :synopsis: Encoders for email message payloads.
  5. When creating :class:`~email.message.Message` objects from scratch, you often
  6. need to encode the payloads for transport through compliant mail servers. This
  7. is especially true for :mimetype:`image/\*` and :mimetype:`text/\*` type messages
  8. containing binary data.
  9. The :mod:`email` package provides some convenient encodings in its
  10. :mod:`encoders` module. These encoders are actually used by the
  11. :class:`~email.mime.audio.MIMEAudio` and :class:`~email.mime.image.MIMEImage`
  12. class constructors to provide default encodings. All encoder functions take
  13. exactly one argument, the message object to encode. They usually extract the
  14. payload, encode it, and reset the payload to this newly encoded value. They
  15. should also set the :mailheader:`Content-Transfer-Encoding` header as appropriate.
  16. Here are the encoding functions provided:
  17. .. function:: encode_quopri(msg)
  18. Encodes the payload into quoted-printable form and sets the
  19. :mailheader:`Content-Transfer-Encoding` header to ``quoted-printable`` [#]_.
  20. This is a good encoding to use when most of your payload is normal printable
  21. data, but contains a few unprintable characters.
  22. .. function:: encode_base64(msg)
  23. Encodes the payload into base64 form and sets the
  24. :mailheader:`Content-Transfer-Encoding` header to ``base64``. This is a good
  25. encoding to use when most of your payload is unprintable data since it is a more
  26. compact form than quoted-printable. The drawback of base64 encoding is that it
  27. renders the text non-human readable.
  28. .. function:: encode_7or8bit(msg)
  29. This doesn't actually modify the message's payload, but it does set the
  30. :mailheader:`Content-Transfer-Encoding` header to either ``7bit`` or ``8bit`` as
  31. appropriate, based on the payload data.
  32. .. function:: encode_noop(msg)
  33. This does nothing; it doesn't even set the
  34. :mailheader:`Content-Transfer-Encoding` header.
  35. .. rubric:: Footnotes
  36. .. [#] Note that encoding with :meth:`encode_quopri` also encodes all tabs and space
  37. characters in the data.