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  <div class="section" id="module-email.parser">
<span id="email-parser-parsing-email-messages"></span><h1>18.1.2. <a class="reference internal" href="#module-email.parser" title="email.parser: Parse flat text email messages to produce a message object structure."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.parser</span></code></a>: Parsing email messages<a class="headerlink" href="#module-email.parser" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>Message object structures can be created in one of two ways: they can be created
from whole cloth by instantiating <a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message" title="email.message.Message"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Message</span></code></a> objects and
stringing them together via <a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.attach" title="email.message.Message.attach"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">attach()</span></code></a> and
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.set_payload" title="email.message.Message.set_payload"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">set_payload()</span></code></a> calls, or they
can be created by parsing a flat text representation of the email message.</p>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="email.html#module-email" title="email: Package supporting the parsing, manipulating, and generating email messages, including MIME documents."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email</span></code></a> package provides a standard parser that understands most email
document structures, including MIME documents.  You can pass the parser a string
or a file object, and the parser will return to you the root
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message" title="email.message.Message"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Message</span></code></a> instance of the object structure.  For simple,
non-MIME messages the payload of this root object will likely be a string
containing the text of the message.  For MIME messages, the root object will
return <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">True</span></code> from its <a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.is_multipart" title="email.message.Message.is_multipart"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">is_multipart()</span></code></a> method, and
the subparts can be accessed via the <a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.get_payload" title="email.message.Message.get_payload"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">get_payload()</span></code></a>
and <a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.walk" title="email.message.Message.walk"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">walk()</span></code></a> methods.</p>
<p>There are actually two parser interfaces available for use, the classic
<a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> API and the incremental <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> API.  The classic
<a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> API is fine if you have the entire text of the message in memory
as a string, or if the entire message lives in a file on the file system.
<a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> is more appropriate for when you’re reading the message from
a stream which might block waiting for more input (e.g. reading an email message
from a socket).  The <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> can consume and parse the message
incrementally, and only returns the root object when you close the parser <a class="footnote-reference brackets" href="#id2" id="id1">1</a>.</p>
<p>Note that the parser can be extended in limited ways, and of course you can
implement your own parser completely from scratch.  There is no magical
connection between the <a class="reference internal" href="email.html#module-email" title="email: Package supporting the parsing, manipulating, and generating email messages, including MIME documents."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email</span></code></a> package’s bundled parser and the
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message" title="email.message.Message"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Message</span></code></a> class, so your custom parser can create message
object trees any way it finds necessary.</p>
<div class="section" id="feedparser-api">
<h2>18.1.2.1. FeedParser API<a class="headerlink" href="#feedparser-api" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<div class="versionadded">
<p><span class="versionmodified added">New in version 2.4.</span></p>
</div>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a>, imported from the <code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.feedparser</span></code> module,
provides an API that is conducive to incremental parsing of email messages, such
as would be necessary when reading the text of an email message from a source
that can block (e.g. a socket).  The <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> can of course be used
to parse an email message fully contained in a string or a file, but the classic
<a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> API may be more convenient for such use cases.  The semantics
and results of the two parser APIs are identical.</p>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a>’s API is simple; you create an instance, feed it a bunch
of text until there’s no more to feed it, then close the parser to retrieve the
root message object.  The <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> is extremely accurate when parsing
standards-compliant messages, and it does a very good job of parsing
non-compliant messages, providing information about how a message was deemed
broken.  It will populate a message object’s <em>defects</em> attribute with a list of
any problems it found in a message.  See the <a class="reference internal" href="email.errors.html#module-email.errors" title="email.errors: The exception classes used by the email package."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.errors</span></code></a> module for the
list of defects that it can find.</p>
<p>Here is the API for the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a>:</p>
<dl class="class">
<dt id="email.parser.FeedParser">
<em class="property">class </em><code class="descclassname">email.parser.</code><code class="descname">FeedParser</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><span class="optional">[</span><em>_factory</em><span class="optional">]</span><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Create a <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> instance.  Optional <em>_factory</em> is a no-argument
callable that will be called whenever a new message object is needed.  It
defaults to the <a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message" title="email.message.Message"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.message.Message</span></code></a> class.</p>
<dl class="method">
<dt id="email.parser.FeedParser.feed">
<code class="descname">feed</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>data</em><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.parser.FeedParser.feed" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Feed the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> some more data.  <em>data</em> should be a string
containing one or more lines.  The lines can be partial and the
<a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> will stitch such partial lines together properly.  The
lines in the string can have any of the common three line endings,
carriage return, newline, or carriage return and newline (they can even be
mixed).</p>
</dd></dl>

<dl class="method">
<dt id="email.parser.FeedParser.close">
<code class="descname">close</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.parser.FeedParser.close" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Closing a <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a> completes the parsing of all previously fed
data, and returns the root message object.  It is undefined what happens
if you feed more data to a closed <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a>.</p>
</dd></dl>

</dd></dl>

</div>
<div class="section" id="parser-class-api">
<h2>18.1.2.2. Parser class API<a class="headerlink" href="#parser-class-api" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>The <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> class, imported from the <a class="reference internal" href="#module-email.parser" title="email.parser: Parse flat text email messages to produce a message object structure."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.parser</span></code></a> module,
provides an API that can be used to parse a message when the complete contents
of the message are available in a string or file.  The <a class="reference internal" href="#module-email.parser" title="email.parser: Parse flat text email messages to produce a message object structure."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.parser</span></code></a>
module also provides a second class, called <code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">HeaderParser</span></code> which can be
used if you’re only interested in the headers of the message.
<code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">HeaderParser</span></code> can be much faster in these situations, since it does not
attempt to parse the message body, instead setting the payload to the raw body
as a string. <code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">HeaderParser</span></code> has the same API as the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a>
class.</p>
<dl class="class">
<dt id="email.parser.Parser">
<em class="property">class </em><code class="descclassname">email.parser.</code><code class="descname">Parser</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><span class="optional">[</span><em>_class</em><span class="optional">]</span><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>The constructor for the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> class takes an optional argument
<em>_class</em>.  This must be a callable factory (such as a function or a class), and
it is used whenever a sub-message object needs to be created.  It defaults to
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message" title="email.message.Message"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Message</span></code></a> (see <a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#module-email.message" title="email.message: The base class representing email messages."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.message</span></code></a>).  The factory will
be called without arguments.</p>
<p>The optional <em>strict</em> flag is ignored.</p>
<div class="deprecated">
<p><span class="versionmodified deprecated">Deprecated since version 2.4: </span>Because the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> class is a backward compatible API wrapper
around the new-in-Python 2.4 <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a>, <em>all</em> parsing is
effectively non-strict.  You should simply stop passing a <em>strict</em> flag to
the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> constructor.</p>
</div>
<div class="versionchanged">
<p><span class="versionmodified changed">Changed in version 2.2.2: </span>The <em>strict</em> flag was added.</p>
</div>
<div class="versionchanged">
<p><span class="versionmodified changed">Changed in version 2.4: </span>The <em>strict</em> flag was deprecated.</p>
</div>
<p>The other public <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> methods are:</p>
<dl class="method">
<dt id="email.parser.Parser.parse">
<code class="descname">parse</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>fp</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>headersonly</em><span class="optional">]</span><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.parser.Parser.parse" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Read all the data from the file-like object <em>fp</em>, parse the resulting
text, and return the root message object.  <em>fp</em> must support both the
<a class="reference internal" href="io.html#io.TextIOBase.readline" title="io.TextIOBase.readline"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">readline()</span></code></a> and the <a class="reference internal" href="io.html#io.TextIOBase.read" title="io.TextIOBase.read"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">read()</span></code></a>
methods on file-like objects.</p>
<p>The text contained in <em>fp</em> must be formatted as a block of <span class="target" id="index-0"></span><a class="rfc reference external" href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2822.html"><strong>RFC 2822</strong></a>
style headers and header continuation lines, optionally preceded by an
envelope header.  The header block is terminated either by the end of the
data or by a blank line.  Following the header block is the body of the
message (which may contain MIME-encoded subparts).</p>
<p>Optional <em>headersonly</em> is a flag specifying whether to stop parsing after
reading the headers or not.  The default is <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">False</span></code>, meaning it parses
the entire contents of the file.</p>
<div class="versionchanged">
<p><span class="versionmodified changed">Changed in version 2.2.2: </span>The <em>headersonly</em> flag was added.</p>
</div>
</dd></dl>

<dl class="method">
<dt id="email.parser.Parser.parsestr">
<code class="descname">parsestr</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>text</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>headersonly</em><span class="optional">]</span><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.parser.Parser.parsestr" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Similar to the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser.parse" title="email.parser.Parser.parse"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">parse()</span></code></a> method, except it takes a string object
instead of a file-like object.  Calling this method on a string is exactly
equivalent to wrapping <em>text</em> in a <a class="reference internal" href="stringio.html#StringIO.StringIO" title="StringIO.StringIO"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">StringIO</span></code></a> instance first and
calling <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser.parse" title="email.parser.Parser.parse"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">parse()</span></code></a>.</p>
<p>Optional <em>headersonly</em> is as with the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser.parse" title="email.parser.Parser.parse"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">parse()</span></code></a> method.</p>
<div class="versionchanged">
<p><span class="versionmodified changed">Changed in version 2.2.2: </span>The <em>headersonly</em> flag was added.</p>
</div>
</dd></dl>

</dd></dl>

<p>Since creating a message object structure from a string or a file object is such
a common task, two functions are provided as a convenience.  They are available
in the top-level <a class="reference internal" href="email.html#module-email" title="email: Package supporting the parsing, manipulating, and generating email messages, including MIME documents."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email</span></code></a> package namespace.</p>
<dl class="function">
<dt id="email.message_from_string">
<code class="descclassname">email.</code><code class="descname">message_from_string</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>s</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>_class</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>strict</em><span class="optional">]</span><span class="optional">]</span><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.message_from_string" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Return a message object structure from a string.  This is exactly equivalent to
<code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser().parsestr(s)</span></code>.  Optional <em>_class</em> and <em>strict</em> are interpreted as
with the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> class constructor.</p>
<div class="versionchanged">
<p><span class="versionmodified changed">Changed in version 2.2.2: </span>The <em>strict</em> flag was added.</p>
</div>
</dd></dl>

<dl class="function">
<dt id="email.message_from_file">
<code class="descclassname">email.</code><code class="descname">message_from_file</code><span class="sig-paren">(</span><em>fp</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>_class</em><span class="optional">[</span>, <em>strict</em><span class="optional">]</span><span class="optional">]</span><span class="sig-paren">)</span><a class="headerlink" href="#email.message_from_file" title="Permalink to this definition">¶</a></dt>
<dd><p>Return a message object structure tree from an open file object.  This is
exactly equivalent to <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser().parse(fp)</span></code>.  Optional <em>_class</em> and <em>strict</em>
are interpreted as with the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> class constructor.</p>
<div class="versionchanged">
<p><span class="versionmodified changed">Changed in version 2.2.2: </span>The <em>strict</em> flag was added.</p>
</div>
</dd></dl>

<p>Here’s an example of how you might use this at an interactive Python prompt:</p>
<div class="highlight-default notranslate"><div class="highlight"><pre><span></span><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="kn">import</span> <span class="nn">email</span>
<span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">msg</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">email</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">message_from_string</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">myString</span><span class="p">)</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="section" id="additional-notes">
<h2>18.1.2.3. Additional notes<a class="headerlink" href="#additional-notes" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Here are some notes on the parsing semantics:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>Most non-<em class="mimetype">multipart</em> type messages are parsed as a single message
object with a string payload.  These objects will return <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">False</span></code> for
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.is_multipart" title="email.message.Message.is_multipart"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">is_multipart()</span></code></a>.  Their
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.get_payload" title="email.message.Message.get_payload"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">get_payload()</span></code></a> method will return a string object.</p></li>
<li><p>All <em class="mimetype">multipart</em> type messages will be parsed as a container message
object with a list of sub-message objects for their payload.  The outer
container message will return <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">True</span></code> for
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.is_multipart" title="email.message.Message.is_multipart"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">is_multipart()</span></code></a> and their
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.get_payload" title="email.message.Message.get_payload"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">get_payload()</span></code></a> method will return the list of
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message" title="email.message.Message"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Message</span></code></a> subparts.</p></li>
<li><p>Most messages with a content type of <em class="mimetype">message/*</em> (e.g.
<em class="mimetype">message/delivery-status</em> and <em class="mimetype">message/rfc822</em>) will also be
parsed as container object containing a list payload of length 1.  Their
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.is_multipart" title="email.message.Message.is_multipart"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">is_multipart()</span></code></a> method will return <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">True</span></code>.
The single element in the list payload will be a sub-message object.</p></li>
<li><p>Some non-standards compliant messages may not be internally consistent about
their <em class="mimetype">multipart</em>-edness.  Such messages may have a
<em class="mailheader">Content-Type</em> header of type <em class="mimetype">multipart</em>, but their
<a class="reference internal" href="email.message.html#email.message.Message.is_multipart" title="email.message.Message.is_multipart"><code class="xref py py-meth docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">is_multipart()</span></code></a> method may return <code class="docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">False</span></code>.
If such messages were parsed with the <a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a>,
they will have an instance of the
<code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">MultipartInvariantViolationDefect</span></code> class in their
<em>defects</em> attribute list.  See <a class="reference internal" href="email.errors.html#module-email.errors" title="email.errors: The exception classes used by the email package."><code class="xref py py-mod docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">email.errors</span></code></a> for details.</p></li>
</ul>
<p class="rubric">Footnotes</p>
<dl class="footnote brackets">
<dt class="label" id="id2"><span class="brackets"><a class="fn-backref" href="#id1">1</a></span></dt>
<dd><p>As of email package version 3.0, introduced in Python 2.4, the classic
<a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.Parser" title="email.parser.Parser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">Parser</span></code></a> was re-implemented in terms of the
<a class="reference internal" href="#email.parser.FeedParser" title="email.parser.FeedParser"><code class="xref py py-class docutils literal notranslate"><span class="pre">FeedParser</span></code></a>, so the semantics and results are
identical between the two parsers.</p>
</dd>
</dl>
</div>
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#feedparser-api">18.1.2.1. FeedParser API</a></li>
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