Issue 20845: email.utils.formataddr encodes incorrectly (original) (raw)

Created on 2014-03-03 18:14 by Michael.JasonSmith, last changed 2022-04-11 14:57 by admin. This issue is now closed.

Messages (4)
msg212648 - (view)	Author: Michael JasonSmith (Michael.JasonSmith)	Date: 2014-03-03 18:14
The email.utils.formataddr function is used to encode a name-address 2-tuple for use as an email message. If the name contains a non-ASCII character it needs to be encoded. This happens correctly in Python 3.3.2, but incorrectly in Python 2.7.5. Ideally Python 2 would acquire the Python 3 behaviour, as this should make porting easier. In the following Python 3.3.2 example the name is encoded because of the non-ASCII ☢ character: >>> import email.utils >>> name = 'Me ☢' >>> addr = 'mpj17@onlinegroups.net' >>> email.utils.formataddr((name, addr)) '=?utf-8?b?TWUg4pii?= <mpj17@onlinegroups.net>' In Python 2.7.5 the same name is incorrectly left unaltered: >>> import email.utils >>> name = u'Me ☢' >>> addr = 'mpj17@onlinegroups.net' >>> email.utils.formataddr((name, addr)) u'Me \u2622 <mpj17@onlinegroups.net>' However, calling the email.header.Header.encode method works around this issue in Python 2: >>> import email.utils >>> import email.header >>> name = u'Me ☢' >>> addr = 'mpj17@onlinegroups.net' >>> h = email.header.Header(name) >>> email.utils.formataddr((h.encode(), addr)) '=?utf-8?b?TWUg4pii?= <mpj17@onlinegroups.net>' The example code immediately above also works in Python 3; it is the current work-around in GroupServer. However, ideally instances of Unicode objects passed to email.utils.formataddr will work the same in both Python 2 and Python 3.
msg212650 - (view)	Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) *	Date: 2014-03-03 18:22
At the time we introduced this behavior in python3, it was considered an enhancement and thus not suitable for backporting. So you'd have to advocate for backporting it on python-dev. My guess is it won't be approved, especially since there are significant other differences in the python2 vs python3 email packages (eg: BytesParser/BytesGenerator).
msg212651 - (view)	Author: Michael JasonSmith (Michael.JasonSmith)	Date: 2014-03-03 18:37
I care enough to lodge an issue, but I lack the conviction in order to belabour the point in python-dev! I'll mark this issue as closed. Hopefully the work-around in my original post will help others :)
msg212654 - (view)	Author: R. David Murray (r.david.murray) *	Date: 2014-03-03 19:07
Well, the "work around" was how you always had to do it in python2. So this is just a bit you can't port to the easier Python3 interface until you can drop python2 support.