Sending mail from 'current user' in Python

[Matt]

Mike Meyer wrote:
> Leo Breebaart <leo at lspace.org> writes:
>
> > I can get the username info (at least on Unix) via the 'pwd'
> > module, but that still leaves me with the domainname, or rather
> > the mailname, and I have not been able to spot a way of finding
> > that from within Python. (I could try opening /etc/mailname by
> > hand, but how standard is that filename/location?)
>
> Not very. Certainly doesn't exist on FreeBSD, and doesn't appear
> anywhere in the sources for my UMA.
>
> BTW, an alternative for the username is the USER environment
> variable. I don't know whether or not it exists on Windows.
>
> > I've also tried opening a pipe to sendmail, and feeding the
> > message to that instead. This too works great (and does give an
> > appropriate default 'From'), but that also turns my problem into
> > the problem of finding the location of the sendmail program,
> > which doesn't seem like much of an improvement, portability-wise.
>
> Well, you could provide a list of places to look for it. But you're
> right, this doesn't help much with portability.
>
> > Finally, if at all possible I'd also like to get this working on
> > Windows, so I'd rather stick with the standard smtplib if I can.
>
> smtplib needs an SMTP server to connect to. For unix systems, this is
> typically localhost. What do you use for Windows systems? Or are you
> connecting to your machine to deliver the mail?
>
> The problem with getting this working on Windows is that, IIRC, the
> information you need is configured in the UMA, and not in some
> system-wide location, at least on some versions of Windows, and it
> typically is unrelated to the name of the Windows box you're on.
>
> Given those constraints, the simple solution is probably to ask the
> user for the information you need.
>
> Failing that, and assuming os.env['USER'] exists on windows, you could
> try:
>
>         1) Looking up the IP address of the host in question. Not the
>            interface - you need the address the outside world sees.
>            See <URL: http://www.whatismyip.com/ > for example.
>         2) Do a reverse DNS lookup on that ip address to get a host name.
>            If they've got a dynamic IP address, this will probably be
>            something ugly, if you get anything at all.
>         3) Start doing MX lookups on that host name, stripping off one
>            domain level at a time from the left until you get an address
>            with an MX record, or you've got nothing left. This assumes
>            that an MX record will exist for the part of the domain name
>            which get mail - which may not be true.
>
> This entire procedure also assumes that the user reads mail using
> their ISP-provided maildrop, which may not be true.
>

This does work (at least on WinXP Pro, using python 2.3.4):

>>> os.environ["USERNAME"]
'myusername'



>       <mike
> --
> Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
> Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.