How To Use Sendgrid In Django

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In the realm of software and web development, it is frequently necessary to utilize email functionality within an application for tasks such as verification, notifications, and newsletters. A highly efficient approach to this is the combination of Django, a high-level Python web framework, with SendGrid, a reputable email service provider.

In this blog post, we will be discussing how to use SendGrid in Django for sending emails.

Installation & Setup

The first step is to install the SendGrid Python library. It can be installed from PyPI using pip:

pip install sendgrid

Next, you need to get your SendGrid API Key. After creating your SendGrid account, navigate to Settings > API Keys > Create a New API key. Make sure to save this key somewhere safe as it will only be displayed once.

Setting Up Django

The next step is to configure Django to use SendGrid. Add the following settings to your settings.py file:

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
SENDGRID_API_KEY = 'your-sendgrid-api-key'
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.sendgrid.net'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'apikey' # this is exactly the value 'apikey'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = SENDGRID_API_KEY
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True

Replace ‘your-sendgrid-api-key’ with the actual SendGrid API key that you just created.

Sending an Email

Now that everything is set up, you can send emails using Django’s built-in send_mail() function. Here’s an example:

from django.core.mail import send_mail

send_mail(
    'Hello from SendGrid',
    'This is a test email.',
    'from@example.com',
    ['to@example.com'],
    fail_silently=False,
)

In this code, ‘Hello from SendGrid’ is the subject of the email, ‘This is a test email.’ is the email body, ‘from@example.com’ is the sender’s email address, and ‘to@example.com’ is the recipient’s email address.

Conclusion

In this blog post, we have learnt how to use SendGrid in Django for sending emails. SendGrid not only provides a reliable email server, but also helps in managing bounces, spam reports, and other parts of maintaining a healthy email service. Combined with Django’s easy-to-use built-in functions, it offers a powerful tool for any web developer’s toolkit.

Remember, while this simple setup might work for smaller applications or testing environments, you might need more robust solutions for handling emails in a bigger, more complex, production environment. Happy coding!