Send emails with Django and Gmail , a better way

In this post I want to talk about how can we send emails using Django and Gmail, I read a lot of articles about this but none of them is working for me, this is my way of doing this

Setup Django 💚

first let's install django

 pip install django

start a django project

django-admin startproject send_gmail

start a django app

cd send_gmail
python manage.py  startapp send

add the app to settings.py installed app

# send_gmail/settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
send,
]

migrate and create a super user

python manage.py  migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser

check this post if you want to know more about how to create a virtual environment , or how to install Django and start your project

The Gmail part ✉

now you need to create a Gmail account and then click on Manage your google account

now click on the Security tab

make sure to enable two steps verification

now click on App passwords

you have to type your password again

click on select app choose other (Custome Name) and give a name to you app

the last step click on generate and Gmail will generate a key or an app password make sure to copy this key or save it in a text file

Edit your settings.py file

#gmail_send/settings.py
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'yoorusername@gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'key' #past the key or password app here
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'default from email'

🎉🎉 now you are ready to send emails with Django and Gmail in production🎉🎉

For further exploration

you can use SendGrid, Mailgun, Sendinblue... for your apps too don't forget to put your key in a .env file