How to get line breaks in e-mail sent using Python's smtplib?

Question

I have written a script that writes a message to a text file and also sends it as an email. Everything goes well, except the email finally appears to be all in one line.

I add line breaks by \n and it works for the text file but not for the email. Do you know what could be the possible reason?

---

Here's my code:

import smtplib, sys
import traceback
def send_error(sender, recipient, headers, body):

    SMTP_SERVER = 'smtp.gmail.com'
    SMTP_PORT = 587
    session = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587)
    session.ehlo()
    session.starttls()
    session.ehlo
    session.login(sender, 'my password')
    send_it = session.sendmail(sender, recipient, headers + "\r\n\r\n" +  body)
    session.quit()
    return send_it


SMTP_SERVER = 'smtp.gmail.com'
SMTP_PORT = 587
sender = '[email protected]'
recipient = '[email protected]'
subject = 'report'
body = "Dear Student, \n Please send your report\n Thank you for your attention"
open('student.txt', 'w').write(body) 

headers = ["From: " + sender,
               "Subject: " + subject,
               "To: " + recipient,
               "MIME-Version: 1.0",
               "Content-Type: text/html"]
headers = "\r\n".join(headers)
send_error(sender, recipient, headers, body)

Answer 1

Unfortunately for us all, not every type of program or application uses the same standardization that python does.

Looking at your question i notice your header is: "Content-Type: text/html"

Which means you need to use HTML style tags for your new-lines, these are called line-breaks. <br>

Your text should be:

"Dear Student, <br> Please send your report<br> Thank you for your attention"

If you would rather use character type new-lines, you must change the header to read: "Content-Type: text/plain"

You would still have to change the new-line character from a single \n to the double \r\n which is used in email.

Your text would be:

"Dear Student, \r\n Please send your report\r\n Thank you for your attention"