Sending email via Django gives me (_ssl.c:3895) error

Question

It looks like there is a problem with the ssl certificate when trying to send emails using django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend.

Settings.py

EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[email protected]'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'
EMAIL_PORT = 587
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE = certifi.where()
EMAIL_SSL_CA_BUNDLE = certifi.where()

The password is an app password I created in my google account. I even tried to use third party services like Elastic Email and SendGrid, but it still gives me an error. Removing the EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE and EMAIL_SSL_CA_BUNDLE will then give me a (_ssl.c:997) error.

views.py

@api_view(["POST"])
def signupUser(request):
    serializer = UserSerializer(data=request.data)

    if serializer.is_valid():
        serializer.save()
        return Response(serializer.data)
    else:
        return Response(serializer.errors, status=status.HTTP_400_BAD_REQUEST)

Serializers.py

import random

from user_api.models import CustomUser
from django.contrib.auth.hashers import make_password
from django.core.mail import EmailMessage
from django.core.mail import send_mail

from rest_framework import serializers

class UserSerializer(serializers.ModelSerializer):
    class Meta:
        model = CustomUser
        fields = ['username', 'email', 'password', 'profile_image', 'api_key']
        extra_kwargs = {'password': {'write_only': True}, 'id': {'read_only': True}}

    def update(self, instance, validated_data):
        instance.username = validated_data['username']
        instance.email = validated_data['email']
        instance.api_key = validated_data['api_key']
        instance.profile_image = validated_data['profile_image']

        instance.save()
        return instance

    def create(self, validated_data):
        verification_code = random.randint(100000, 999999)
        user = CustomUser.objects.create(username=validated_data['username'],email=validated_data['email'], password=make_password(validated_data['password']), verification_code=verification_code)
        user.set_password(validated_data['password'])
        user.save()

        email = EmailMessage(
            'Hello',
            f'This is your verification code : {verification_code}',
            '[email protected]',
            [validated_data['email']]
        )

        email.fail_silently=False
        email.send()
        
        return user

I also tried switching the EMAIL_BACKEND to django.core.mail.backends.console.EmailBackend. It works well and I see the email being logged in the console.

Answer 1

It could be related to using TLS instead of SSL, or could be caused by incorrect handling of the SSL certificates.

First we try with TLS, by changing your EMAIL_USE_TLS setting to False and set EMAIL_USE_SSL to True. Also, change EMAIL_PORT to 465

Or we could remove the EMAIL_SSL_CERTFILE and EMAIL_SSL_CA_BUNDLE, your email settings should be like that:

EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '[email protected]'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'password'
EMAIL_PORT = 465
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False
EMAIL_USE_SSL = True
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'