mirror of https://github.com/python/cpython
198 lines
8.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
198 lines
8.5 KiB
ReStructuredText
:mod:`email.header`: Internationalized headers
|
|
----------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
.. module:: email.header
|
|
:synopsis: Representing non-ASCII headers
|
|
|
|
**Source code:** :source:`Lib/email/header.py`
|
|
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
:rfc:`2822` is the base standard that describes the format of email messages.
|
|
It derives from the older :rfc:`822` standard which came into widespread use at
|
|
a time when most email was composed of ASCII characters only. :rfc:`2822` is a
|
|
specification written assuming email contains only 7-bit ASCII characters.
|
|
|
|
Of course, as email has been deployed worldwide, it has become
|
|
internationalized, such that language specific character sets can now be used in
|
|
email messages. The base standard still requires email messages to be
|
|
transferred using only 7-bit ASCII characters, so a slew of RFCs have been
|
|
written describing how to encode email containing non-ASCII characters into
|
|
:rfc:`2822`\ -compliant format. These RFCs include :rfc:`2045`, :rfc:`2046`,
|
|
:rfc:`2047`, and :rfc:`2231`. The :mod:`email` package supports these standards
|
|
in its :mod:`email.header` and :mod:`email.charset` modules.
|
|
|
|
If you want to include non-ASCII characters in your email headers, say in the
|
|
:mailheader:`Subject` or :mailheader:`To` fields, you should use the
|
|
:class:`Header` class and assign the field in the :class:`~email.message.Message`
|
|
object to an instance of :class:`Header` instead of using a string for the header
|
|
value. Import the :class:`Header` class from the :mod:`email.header` module.
|
|
For example::
|
|
|
|
>>> from email.message import Message
|
|
>>> from email.header import Header
|
|
>>> msg = Message()
|
|
>>> h = Header('p\xf6stal', 'iso-8859-1')
|
|
>>> msg['Subject'] = h
|
|
>>> msg.as_string()
|
|
'Subject: =?iso-8859-1?q?p=F6stal?=\n\n'
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Notice here how we wanted the :mailheader:`Subject` field to contain a non-ASCII
|
|
character? We did this by creating a :class:`Header` instance and passing in
|
|
the character set that the byte string was encoded in. When the subsequent
|
|
:class:`~email.message.Message` instance was flattened, the :mailheader:`Subject`
|
|
field was properly :rfc:`2047` encoded. MIME-aware mail readers would show this
|
|
header using the embedded ISO-8859-1 character.
|
|
|
|
Here is the :class:`Header` class description:
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. class:: Header(s=None, charset=None, maxlinelen=None, header_name=None, continuation_ws=' ', errors='strict')
|
|
|
|
Create a MIME-compliant header that can contain strings in different character
|
|
sets.
|
|
|
|
Optional *s* is the initial header value. If ``None`` (the default), the
|
|
initial header value is not set. You can later append to the header with
|
|
:meth:`append` method calls. *s* may be an instance of :class:`bytes` or
|
|
:class:`str`, but see the :meth:`append` documentation for semantics.
|
|
|
|
Optional *charset* serves two purposes: it has the same meaning as the *charset*
|
|
argument to the :meth:`append` method. It also sets the default character set
|
|
for all subsequent :meth:`append` calls that omit the *charset* argument. If
|
|
*charset* is not provided in the constructor (the default), the ``us-ascii``
|
|
character set is used both as *s*'s initial charset and as the default for
|
|
subsequent :meth:`append` calls.
|
|
|
|
The maximum line length can be specified explicitly via *maxlinelen*. For
|
|
splitting the first line to a shorter value (to account for the field header
|
|
which isn't included in *s*, e.g. :mailheader:`Subject`) pass in the name of the
|
|
field in *header_name*. The default *maxlinelen* is 76, and the default value
|
|
for *header_name* is ``None``, meaning it is not taken into account for the
|
|
first line of a long, split header.
|
|
|
|
Optional *continuation_ws* must be :rfc:`2822`\ -compliant folding
|
|
whitespace, and is usually either a space or a hard tab character. This
|
|
character will be prepended to continuation lines. *continuation_ws*
|
|
defaults to a single space character.
|
|
|
|
Optional *errors* is passed straight through to the :meth:`append` method.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. method:: append(s, charset=None, errors='strict')
|
|
|
|
Append the string *s* to the MIME header.
|
|
|
|
Optional *charset*, if given, should be a :class:`~email.charset.Charset`
|
|
instance (see :mod:`email.charset`) or the name of a character set, which
|
|
will be converted to a :class:`~email.charset.Charset` instance. A value
|
|
of ``None`` (the default) means that the *charset* given in the constructor
|
|
is used.
|
|
|
|
*s* may be an instance of :class:`bytes` or :class:`str`. If it is an
|
|
instance of :class:`bytes`, then *charset* is the encoding of that byte
|
|
string, and a :exc:`UnicodeError` will be raised if the string cannot be
|
|
decoded with that character set.
|
|
|
|
If *s* is an instance of :class:`str`, then *charset* is a hint specifying
|
|
the character set of the characters in the string.
|
|
|
|
In either case, when producing an :rfc:`2822`\ -compliant header using
|
|
:rfc:`2047` rules, the string will be encoded using the output codec of
|
|
the charset. If the string cannot be encoded using the output codec, a
|
|
UnicodeError will be raised.
|
|
|
|
Optional *errors* is passed as the errors argument to the decode call
|
|
if *s* is a byte string.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. method:: encode(splitchars=';, \\t', maxlinelen=None, linesep='\\n')
|
|
|
|
Encode a message header into an RFC-compliant format, possibly wrapping
|
|
long lines and encapsulating non-ASCII parts in base64 or quoted-printable
|
|
encodings.
|
|
|
|
Optional *splitchars* is a string containing characters which should be
|
|
given extra weight by the splitting algorithm during normal header
|
|
wrapping. This is in very rough support of :RFC:`2822`\'s 'higher level
|
|
syntactic breaks': split points preceded by a splitchar are preferred
|
|
during line splitting, with the characters preferred in the order in
|
|
which they appear in the string. Space and tab may be included in the
|
|
string to indicate whether preference should be given to one over the
|
|
other as a split point when other split chars do not appear in the line
|
|
being split. Splitchars does not affect :RFC:`2047` encoded lines.
|
|
|
|
*maxlinelen*, if given, overrides the instance's value for the maximum
|
|
line length.
|
|
|
|
*linesep* specifies the characters used to separate the lines of the
|
|
folded header. It defaults to the most useful value for Python
|
|
application code (``\n``), but ``\r\n`` can be specified in order
|
|
to produce headers with RFC-compliant line separators.
|
|
|
|
.. versionchanged:: 3.2
|
|
Added the *linesep* argument.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The :class:`Header` class also provides a number of methods to support
|
|
standard operators and built-in functions.
|
|
|
|
.. method:: __str__()
|
|
|
|
Returns an approximation of the :class:`Header` as a string, using an
|
|
unlimited line length. All pieces are converted to unicode using the
|
|
specified encoding and joined together appropriately. Any pieces with a
|
|
charset of ``'unknown-8bit'`` are decoded as ASCII using the ``'replace'``
|
|
error handler.
|
|
|
|
.. versionchanged:: 3.2
|
|
Added handling for the ``'unknown-8bit'`` charset.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. method:: __eq__(other)
|
|
|
|
This method allows you to compare two :class:`Header` instances for
|
|
equality.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. method:: __ne__(other)
|
|
|
|
This method allows you to compare two :class:`Header` instances for
|
|
inequality.
|
|
|
|
The :mod:`email.header` module also provides the following convenient functions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. function:: decode_header(header)
|
|
|
|
Decode a message header value without converting the character set. The header
|
|
value is in *header*.
|
|
|
|
This function returns a list of ``(decoded_string, charset)`` pairs containing
|
|
each of the decoded parts of the header. *charset* is ``None`` for non-encoded
|
|
parts of the header, otherwise a lower case string containing the name of the
|
|
character set specified in the encoded string.
|
|
|
|
Here's an example::
|
|
|
|
>>> from email.header import decode_header
|
|
>>> decode_header('=?iso-8859-1?q?p=F6stal?=')
|
|
[(b'p\xf6stal', 'iso-8859-1')]
|
|
|
|
|
|
.. function:: make_header(decoded_seq, maxlinelen=None, header_name=None, continuation_ws=' ')
|
|
|
|
Create a :class:`Header` instance from a sequence of pairs as returned by
|
|
:func:`decode_header`.
|
|
|
|
:func:`decode_header` takes a header value string and returns a sequence of
|
|
pairs of the format ``(decoded_string, charset)`` where *charset* is the name of
|
|
the character set.
|
|
|
|
This function takes one of those sequence of pairs and returns a
|
|
:class:`Header` instance. Optional *maxlinelen*, *header_name*, and
|
|
*continuation_ws* are as in the :class:`Header` constructor.
|
|
|