This blog post explains the solution to scenarios pertaining to failure/ unavailability of Sendgrid service when an attempt is made to send emails in Eventyay. Eventyay is the outstanding Open Event management solution using standardized event formats developed at FOSSASIA.
Currently, the Open Event Project utilizes 2 protocols namely, SendGrid and SMTP. Previously, they could be configured only be configured individually. If either protocol failed, there was no provision for a backup and the task to send the email would fail.
Therefore, there was a necessity to develop a feature where the SMTP protocol, which is usually more reliable than 3rd party services, could act as a backup when sendgrid server is unavailable or the allotted quota has been exceeded.
def check_smtp_config(smtp_encryption):
"""
Checks config of SMTP
"""
config = {
'host': get_settings()['smtp_host'],
'username': get_settings()['smtp_username'],
'password': get_settings()['smtp_password'],
'encryption': smtp_encryption,
'port': get_settings()['smtp_port'],
}
for field in config:
if field is None:
return False
return True
Function to check if SMTP has been properly configured
The main principle which was followed to implement this feature was to prevent sending emails when SMTP is not configured. Ergo, a function was implemented to check if the host, username, password, encryption and port was present in the model before proceeding. If this was configured properly, we move on to determining the protocol which was enabled. For this, we have 2 separate celery tasks, one for SMTP and the other for Sendgrid.
@celery.task(name='send.email.post.sendgrid')
def send_email_task_sendgrid(payload, headers, smtp_config):
try:
message = Mail(from_email=From(payload['from'], payload['fromname']),
to_emails=payload['to'],
subject=payload['subject'],
html_content=payload["html"])
if payload['attachments'] is not None:
for attachment in payload['attachments']:
with open(attachment, 'rb') as f:
file_data = f.read()
f.close()
encoded = base64.b64encode(file_data).decode()
attachment = Attachment()
attachment.file_content = FileContent(encoded)
attachment.file_type = FileType('application/pdf')
attachment.file_name = FileName(payload['to'])
attachment.disposition = Disposition('attachment')
message.add_attachment(attachment)
sendgrid_client = SendGridAPIClient(get_settings()['sendgrid_key'])
logging.info('Sending an email regarding {} on behalf of {}'.format(payload["subject"], payload["from"]))
sendgrid_client.send(message)
logging.info('Email sent successfully')
except urllib.error.HTTPError as e:
if e.code == 429:
logging.warning("Sendgrid quota has exceeded")
send_email_task_smtp.delay(payload=payload, headers=None, smtp_config=smtp_config)
elif e.code == 554:
empty_attachments_send(sendgrid_client, message)
else:
logging.exception("The following error has occurred with sendgrid-{}".format(str(e)))
@celery.task(name='send.email.post.smtp')
def send_email_task_smtp(payload, smtp_config, headers=None):
mailer_config = {
'transport': {
'use': 'smtp',
'host': smtp_config['host'],
'username': smtp_config['username'],
'password': smtp_config['password'],
'tls': smtp_config['encryption'],
'port': smtp_config['port']
}
}
try:
mailer = Mailer(mailer_config)
mailer.start()
message = Message(author=payload['from'], to=payload['to'])
message.subject = payload['subject']
message.plain = strip_tags(payload['html'])
message.rich = payload['html']
if payload['attachments'] is not None:
for attachment in payload['attachments']:
message.attach(name=attachment)
mailer.send(message)
logging.info('Message sent via SMTP')
except urllib.error.HTTPError as e:
if e.code == 554:
empty_attachments_send(mailer, message)
mailer.stop()
Falling back to SMTP when the system has exceeded the sendgrid quota
Consider the function associated with the sendgrid task. The logic which sends the emails along with the payload is present in a try/catch block. When an exception occurs while attempting to send the email, it is caught via the requests library and checks for the HTTP code. If the code is determined as 429, this implies that there were TOO_MANY_REQUESTS going through or otherwise in sendgrid lingo, it means that you’ve exceeded your quota. In this case, we will not stop sending the email, rather, we would alternate to a backup solution of sending it via the SMTP protocol. In this way, we can ensure that emails would work without any kind of hassle.
def send_email(to, action, subject, html, attachments=None):
"""
Sends email and records it in DB
"""
from .tasks import send_email_task_sendgrid, send_email_task_smtp
if not string_empty(to):
email_service = get_settings()['email_service']
email_from_name = get_settings()['email_from_name']
if email_service == 'smtp':
email_from = email_from_name + '<' + get_settings()['email_from'] + '>'
else:
email_from = get_settings()['email_from']
payload = {
'to': to,
'from': email_from,
'subject': subject,
'html': html,
'attachments': attachments
}
if not current_app.config['TESTING']:
smtp_encryption = get_settings()['smtp_encryption']
if smtp_encryption == 'tls':
smtp_encryption = 'required'
elif smtp_encryption == 'ssl':
smtp_encryption = 'ssl'
elif smtp_encryption == 'tls_optional':
smtp_encryption = 'optional'
else:
smtp_encryption = 'none'
smtp_config = {
'host': get_settings()['smtp_host'],
'username': get_settings()['smtp_username'],
'password': get_settings()['smtp_password'],
'encryption': smtp_encryption,
'port': get_settings()['smtp_port'],
}
smtp_status = check_smtp_config(smtp_encryption)
if smtp_status:
if email_service == 'smtp':
send_email_task_smtp.delay(payload=payload, headers=None, smtp_config=smtp_config)
else:
key = get_settings().get('sendgrid_key')
if key:
headers = {
"Authorization": ("Bearer " + key),
"Content-Type": "application/json"
}
payload['fromname'] = email_from_name
send_email_task_sendgrid.delay(payload=payload, headers=headers, smtp_config=smtp_config)
else:
logging.exception('SMTP & sendgrid have not been configured properly')
else:
logging.exception('SMTP is not configured properly. Cannot send email.')
# record_mail(to, action, subject, html)
mail = Mail(
recipient=to, action=action, subject=subject,
message=html, time=datetime.utcnow()
)
save_to_db(mail, 'Mail Recorded')
record_activity('mail_event', email=to, action=action, subject=subject)
return True
Fallback logic – SMTP/Sendgrid
Resources:
Related work and code repo:
Tags:
Eventyay, FOSSASIA, Flask, SMTP, Open Event, Sendgrid, Python