Sending Mail¶

Djrill handles all outgoing email sent through Django’s standard django.core.mail package, including send_mail(), send_mass_mail(), the EmailMessage class, and even mail_admins().

If you’d like to selectively send only some messages through Mandrill, there is a way to use multiple email backends.

Django Email Support¶

Djrill supports most of the functionality of Django’s EmailMessage and EmailMultiAlternatives classes.

Some notes and limitations:

Display Names

All email addresses (from, to, cc, bcc) can be simple (“email@example.com”) or can include a display name (“Real Name <email@example.com>”).

CC and BCC Recipients

Djrill properly identifies “cc” and “bcc” recipients to Mandrill.

Note that you may need to set the Mandrill option preserve_recipients to True if you want recipients to be able to see who else was included in the “to” list.

HTML/Alternative Parts

To include an HTML version of a message, use attach_alternative():

from django.core.mail import EmailMultiAlternatives

msg = EmailMultiAlternatives("Subject", "text body",
                             "from@example.com", ["to@example.com"])
msg.attach_alternative("<html>html body</html>", "text/html")

Djrill allows a maximum of one attach_alternative() on a message, and it must be mimetype="text/html". Otherwise, Djrill will raise NotSupportedByMandrillError when you attempt to send the message. (Mandrill doesn’t support sending multiple html alternative parts, or any non-html alternatives.)

Attachments

Djrill will send a message’s attachments. (Note that Mandrill may impose limits on size and type of attachments.)

Also, if an image attachment has a Content-ID header, Djrill will tell Mandrill to treat that as an embedded image rather than an ordinary attachment. (For an example, see test_embedded_images() in tests/test_mandrill_send.py.)

Headers

Djrill accepts additional headers and passes them along to Mandrill:

msg = EmailMessage( ...
    headers={'Reply-To': "reply@example.com", 'List-Unsubscribe': "..."}
)

Note

Djrill also supports the reply_to param added to EmailMessage in Django 1.8. (If you provide both a ‘Reply-To’ header and the reply_to param, the header will take precedence.)

Mandrill-Specific Options¶

Most of the options from the Mandrill messages/send API message struct can be set directly on an EmailMessage (or subclass) object.

Note

You can set global defaults for common options with the MANDRILL_SETTINGS setting, to avoid having to set them on every message.

important¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should send this message ahead of non-important ones.

track_opens¶

Boolean: whether Mandrill should enable open-tracking for this message. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

message.track_opens = True

track_clicks¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should enable click-tracking for this message. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

Note

Mandrill has an option to track clicks in HTML email but not plaintext, but it’s only available in your Mandrill account settings. If you want to use that option, set it at Mandrill, and don’t set the track_clicks attribute here.

auto_text¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should automatically generate a text body from the HTML. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

auto_html¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should automatically generate an HTML body from the plaintext. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

inline_css¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should inline CSS styles in the HTML. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

url_strip_qs¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should ignore any query parameters when aggregating URL tracking data. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

preserve_recipients¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should include all recipients in the “to” message header. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

view_content_link¶: Boolean: set False on sensitive messages to instruct Mandrill not to log the content.

tracking_domain¶: str: domain Mandrill should use to rewrite tracked links and host tracking pixels for this message. Useful if you send email from multiple domains. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

signing_domain¶: str: domain Mandrill should use for DKIM signing and SPF on this message. Useful if you send email from multiple domains. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

return_path_domain¶: str: domain Mandrill should use for the message’s return-path.

merge_language¶: str: the merge tag language if using merge tags – e.g., “mailchimp” or “handlebars”. Default from your Mandrill account settings.

global_merge_vars¶

dict: merge variables to use for all recipients (most useful with Mandrill Templates).

message.global_merge_vars = {'company': "ACME", 'offer': "10% off"}

Merge data must be strings or other JSON-serializable types. (See Formatting Merge Data for details.)

merge_vars¶

dict: per-recipient merge variables (most useful with Mandrill Templates). The keys in the dict are the recipient email addresses, and the values are dicts of merge vars for each recipient:

message.merge_vars = {
    'wiley@example.com': {'offer': "15% off anvils"},
    'rr@example.com':    {'offer': "instant tunnel paint"}
}

Merge data must be strings or other JSON-serializable types. (See Formatting Merge Data for details.)

tags¶

list of str: tags to apply to the message, for filtering reports in the Mandrill dashboard. (Note that Mandrill prohibits tags longer than 50 characters or starting with underscores.)

message.tags = ["Order Confirmation", "Test Variant A"]

subaccount¶: str: the ID of one of your subaccounts to use for sending this message.

google_analytics_domains¶

list of str: domain names for links where Mandrill should add Google Analytics tracking parameters.

message.google_analytics_domains = ["example.com"]

google_analytics_campaign¶: str or list of str: the utm_campaign tracking parameter to attach to links when adding Google Analytics tracking. (Mandrill defaults to the message’s from_email as the campaign name.)

metadata¶

dict: metadata values Mandrill should store with the message for later search and retrieval.

message.metadata = {'customer': customer.id, 'order': order.reference_number}

Mandrill restricts metadata keys to alphanumeric characters and underscore, and metadata values to numbers, strings, boolean values, and None (null).

recipient_metadata¶

dict: per-recipient metadata values. Keys are the recipient email addresses, and values are dicts of metadata for each recipient (similar to merge_vars)

Mandrill restricts metadata keys to alphanumeric characters and underscore, and metadata values to numbers, strings, boolean values, and None (null).

async¶: Boolean: whether Mandrill should use an async mode optimized for bulk sending.

ip_pool¶: str: name of one of your Mandrill dedicated IP pools to use for sending this message.

send_at¶

datetime or date or str: instructs Mandrill to delay sending this message until the specified time. Example:

msg.send_at = datetime.utcnow() + timedelta(hours=1)

Mandrill requires a UTC string in the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS. Djrill will convert python dates and datetimes to this form. (Dates will be given a time of 00:00:00.)

Note

Timezones

Mandrill assumes send_at is in the UTC timezone, which is likely not the same as your local time.

Djrill will convert timezone-aware datetimes to UTC for you. But if you format your own string, supply a date, or a naive datetime, you must make sure it is in UTC. See the python datetime docs for more information.

For example, msg.send_at = datetime.now() + timedelta(hours=1) will try to schedule the message for an hour from the current time, but interpreted in the UTC timezone (which isn’t what you want). If you’re more than an hour west of the prime meridian, that will be in the past (and the message will get sent immediately). If you’re east of there, the message might get sent quite a bit later than you intended. One solution is to use utcnow as shown in the earlier example.

Note

Scheduled sending is a paid Mandrill feature. If you are using a free Mandrill account, send_at won’t work.

All the Mandrill-specific attributes listed above work with any EmailMessage-derived object, so you can use them with many other apps that add Django mail functionality.

If you have questions about the python syntax for any of these properties, see DjrillMandrillFeatureTests in tests/test_mandrill_send.py for examples.

Response from Mandrill¶

mandrill_response¶

Djrill adds a mandrill_response attribute to each EmailMessage as it sends it. This allows you to retrieve message ids, initial status information and more.

For an EmailMessage that is successfully sent to one or more email addresses, mandrill_response will be set to a list of dict, where each entry has info for one email address. See the Mandrill docs for the messages/send API for full details.

For example, to get the Mandrill message id for a sent email you might do this:

msg = EmailMultiAlternatives(subject="subject", body="body",
                             from_email="sender@example.com",to=["someone@example.com"])
msg.send()
response = msg.mandrill_response[0]
mandrill_id = response['_id']

For this example, msg.mandrill_response might look like this:

msg.mandrill_response = [
    {
        "email": "someone@example.com",
        "status": "sent",
        "_id": "abc123abc123abc123abc123abc123"
    }
]

If an error is returned by Mandrill while sending the message then mandrill_response will be set to None.

Exceptions¶

exception djrill.NotSupportedByMandrillError¶: If the email tries to use features that aren’t supported by Mandrill, the send call will raise a NotSupportedByMandrillError exception (a subclass of ValueError).

exception djrill.MandrillRecipientsRefused¶

If all recipients (to, cc, bcc) of a message are invalid or rejected by Mandrill (e.g., because they are your Mandrill blacklist), the send call will raise a MandrillRecipientsRefused exception. You can examine the message’s mandrill_response attribute to determine the cause of the error.

If a single message is sent to multiple recipients, and any recipient is valid (or the message is queued by Mandrill because of rate limiting or send_at), then this exception will not be raised. You can still examine the mandrill_response property after the send to determine the status of each recipient.

You can disable this exception by setting MANDRILL_IGNORE_RECIPIENT_STATUS to True in your settings.py, which will cause Djrill to treat any non-API-error response from Mandrill as a successful send.

New in version 2.0: Djrill 1.x behaved as if MANDRILL_IGNORE_RECIPIENT_STATUS = True.

exception djrill.MandrillAPIError¶: If the Mandrill API fails or returns an error response, the send call will raise a MandrillAPIError exception (a subclass of requests.HTTPError). The exception’s status_code and response attributes may help explain what went wrong. (Tip: you can also check Mandrill’s API error log to view the full API request and error response.)

exception djrill.NotSerializableForMandrillError¶

The send call will raise a NotSerializableForMandrillError exception if the message has attached data which cannot be serialized to JSON for the Mandrill API.

See Formatting Merge Data for more information.

New in version 2.0: Djrill 1.x raised a generic TypeError in this case. NotSerializableForMandrillError is a subclass of TypeError for compatibility with existing code.