SendGrid Django SMTP - Python

SendGrid is a cloud-based email service provider that allows you to send emails without having to manage the email infrastructure. Django is a high-level Python web framework that is used for developing web applications. In this tutorial, we will learn how to integrate SendGrid with Django using the SMTP API.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this tutorial, you will need the following:

• Python installed on your local machine
• Django installed on your local machine (pip install Django)
• sendgrid package installed (pip install sendgrid)

Getting Started

To get started, you will need to create a SendGrid account and obtain an API key. You can do this by navigating to the SendGrid website and signing up for the service.

Once you have obtained your API key, you can create a sendgrid client object in your Django application. Here's how:

import sendgrid
from sendgrid.helpers.mail import Mail, Email
from django.conf import settings

def send_email(to, from_email, subject, content):
    sg = sendgrid.SendGridAPIClient(api_key=settings.SENDGRID_API_KEY)
    message = Mail(
        from_email=Email(from_email),
        to_emails=[to],
        subject=subject,
        plain_text_content=content)
    response = sg.send(message)
    return response

In the above code, we're importing the necessary modules, including sendgrid, Mail, Email, and settings. We're also defining a function called send_email, which takes in the recipient email address, sender email address, email subject, and the email content.

The function then creates a sendgrid client object by passing in the API key obtained from the settings module. It then creates a Mail object, setting the recipient, sender, subject, and content. Finally, it sends the email using the send method of the sendgrid client object and returns a response object.

Configuring Django Settings

To use SendGrid in your Django application, you will need to configure your settings. Here's an example:

# settings.py

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
SENDGRID_API_KEY = 'your_api_key_here'
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'your_email_address_here'
SERVER_EMAIL = 'your_email_address_here'

In the above configuration, we're setting the EMAIL_BACKEND to use the SMTP backend, setting the SENDGRID_API_KEY to the value of your API key, and setting the DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL and SERVER_EMAIL fields to your email address.

Sending Emails

To send an email in your Django application, you can simply call the send_email function we defined earlier, passing in the required arguments. Here's an example view:

# views.py

from django.http import HttpResponse
from .utils import send_email

def send_email_view(request):
    to = 'recipient_email_address_here'
    from_email = 'sender_email_address_here'
    subject = 'Email Subject Here'
    content = 'Email Content Here'
    response = send_email(to, from_email, subject, content)
    return HttpResponse(response.status_code)

In the above view, we're importing the send_email function from the utils module, which is where we defined it earlier. We're then defining the required arguments and calling the send_email function, passing in the arguments. Finally, we're returning an HttpResponse object with the status code of the SendGrid response object.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to integrate SendGrid with Django using the SMTP API. We covered the necessary prerequisites, the code required to send an email, and how to configure your Django settings. With this knowledge, you can now easily send emails in your Django applications using SendGrid.