python / python/cpython

email.policy.SMTP TypeError: 'Header' object is not subscriptable

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topic-email type-bug
Dominant language
Python
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Description

Bug report

Code snippet is taken directly from documentation https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.header.html
The only change - policy changed to email.policy.SMTP.
Documentation (https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.policy.html#email.policy.SMTP) states that the only difference between email.policy.default and email.policy.SMTP - linesep used.

from email.message import Message
from email.header import Header
from email.policy import SMTP

msg = Message()
h = Header('p\xf6stal', 'iso-8859-1')
msg['Subject'] = h
print(msg.as_string())

msg = Message(policy=SMTP)
h = Header('p\xf6stal', 'iso-8859-1')
msg['Subject'] = h
print(msg.as_string())

Output is:

Subject: =?iso-8859-1?q?p=F6stal?=


Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\barsk\AppData\Roaming\JetBrains\PyCharm2022.3\scratches\scratch_3.py", line 12, in <module>
    msg['Subject'] = h
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\lib\email\message.py", line 409, in __setitem__
    self._headers.append(self.policy.header_store_parse(name, val))
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\lib\email\policy.py", line 148, in header_store_parse
    return (name, self.header_factory(name, value))
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\lib\email\headerregistry.py", line 589, in __call__
    return self[name](name, value)
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\lib\email\headerregistry.py", line 197, in __new__
    cls.parse(value, kwds)
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\lib\email\headerregistry.py", line 272, in parse
    kwds['parse_tree'] = cls.value_parser(value)
  File "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\lib\email\_header_value_parser.py", line 1105, in get_unstructured
    if value[0] in WSP:
TypeError: 'Header' object is not subscriptable

Your environment

Reproduced on windows on

  • Python 3.11 (64-bit)
  • Python 3.10 (64-bit)
  • Python 3.7 (32-bit)

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by running the provided reproducer with email.message.Message, email.policy.SMTP, and email.header.Header. Trace the failure through email/message.py, email/policy.py, email/headerregistry.py, and email/_header_value_parser.py, then compare it with the default-policy behavior. Done means the SMTP-policy example no longer raises the reported TypeError and preserves the documented output behavior.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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