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<H2><A NAME="SECTION00142110000000000000000">
12.2.11 Package History</A>
</H2>
<P>
Version 1 of the <tt class="module">email</tt> package was bundled with Python
releases up to Python 2.2.1. Version 2 was developed for the Python
2.3 release, and backported to Python 2.2.2. It was also available as
a separate distutils-based package, and is compatible back to Python 2.1.
<P>
<tt class="module">email</tt> version 3.0 was released with Python 2.4 and as a separate
distutils-based package. It is compatible back to Python 2.3.
<P>
Here are the differences between <tt class="module">email</tt> version 3 and version 2:
<P>
<UL>
<LI>The <tt class="class">FeedParser</tt> class was introduced, and the <tt class="class">Parser</tt>
class was implemented in terms of the <tt class="class">FeedParser</tt>. All parsing
there for is non-strict, and parsing will make a best effort never to
raise an exception. Problems found while parsing messages are stored in
the message's <var>defect</var> attribute.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>All aspects of the API which raised <tt class="exception">DeprecationWarning</tt>s in
version 2 have been removed. These include the <var>_encoder</var> argument
to the <tt class="class">MIMEText</tt> constructor, the <tt class="method">Message.add_payload()</tt>
method, the <tt class="function">Utils.dump_address_pair()</tt> function, and the
functions <tt class="function">Utils.decode()</tt> and <tt class="function">Utils.encode()</tt>.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>New <tt class="exception">DeprecationWarning</tt>s have been added to:
<tt class="method">Generator.__call__()</tt>, <tt class="method">Message.get_type()</tt>,
<tt class="method">Message.get_main_type()</tt>, <tt class="method">Message.get_subtype()</tt>, and
the <var>strict</var> argument to the <tt class="class">Parser</tt> class. These are
expected to be removed in email 3.1.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>Support for Pythons earlier than 2.3 has been removed.
</LI>
</UL>
<P>
Here are the differences between <tt class="module">email</tt> version 2 and version 1:
<P>
<UL>
<LI>The <tt class="module">email.Header</tt> and <tt class="module">email.Charset</tt> modules
have been added.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The pickle format for <tt class="class">Message</tt> instances has changed.
Since this was never (and still isn't) formally defined, this
isn't considered a backward incompatibility. However if your
application pickles and unpickles <tt class="class">Message</tt> instances, be
aware that in <tt class="module">email</tt> version 2, <tt class="class">Message</tt>
instances now have private variables <var>_charset</var> and
<var>_default_type</var>.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>Several methods in the <tt class="class">Message</tt> class have been
deprecated, or their signatures changed. Also, many new methods
have been added. See the documentation for the <tt class="class">Message</tt>
class for details. The changes should be completely backward
compatible.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The object structure has changed in the face of
<span class="mimetype">message/rfc822</span> content types. In <tt class="module">email</tt>
version 1, such a type would be represented by a scalar payload,
i.e. the container message's <tt class="method">is_multipart()</tt> returned
false, <tt class="method">get_payload()</tt> was not a list object, but a single
<tt class="class">Message</tt> instance.
<P>
This structure was inconsistent with the rest of the package, so
the object representation for <span class="mimetype">message/rfc822</span> content
types was changed. In <tt class="module">email</tt> version 2, the container
<em>does</em> return <code>True</code> from <tt class="method">is_multipart()</tt>, and
<tt class="method">get_payload()</tt> returns a list containing a single
<tt class="class">Message</tt> item.
<P>
Note that this is one place that backward compatibility could
not be completely maintained. However, if you're already
testing the return type of <tt class="method">get_payload()</tt>, you should be
fine. You just need to make sure your code doesn't do a
<tt class="method">set_payload()</tt> with a <tt class="class">Message</tt> instance on a
container with a content type of <span class="mimetype">message/rfc822</span>.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The <tt class="class">Parser</tt> constructor's <var>strict</var> argument was
added, and its <tt class="method">parse()</tt> and <tt class="method">parsestr()</tt> methods
grew a <var>headersonly</var> argument. The <var>strict</var> flag was
also added to functions <tt class="function">email.message_from_file()</tt>
and <tt class="function">email.message_from_string()</tt>.
<P>
</LI>
<LI><tt class="method">Generator.__call__()</tt> is deprecated; use
<tt class="method">Generator.flatten()</tt> instead. The <tt class="class">Generator</tt>
class has also grown the <tt class="method">clone()</tt> method.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The <tt class="class">DecodedGenerator</tt> class in the
<tt class="module">email.Generator</tt> module was added.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The intermediate base classes <tt class="class">MIMENonMultipart</tt> and
<tt class="class">MIMEMultipart</tt> have been added, and interposed in the
class hierarchy for most of the other MIME-related derived
classes.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The <var>_encoder</var> argument to the <tt class="class">MIMEText</tt> constructor
has been deprecated. Encoding now happens implicitly based
on the <var>_charset</var> argument.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The following functions in the <tt class="module">email.Utils</tt> module have
been deprecated: <tt class="function">dump_address_pairs()</tt>,
<tt class="function">decode()</tt>, and <tt class="function">encode()</tt>. The following
functions have been added to the module:
<tt class="function">make_msgid()</tt>, <tt class="function">decode_rfc2231()</tt>,
<tt class="function">encode_rfc2231()</tt>, and <tt class="function">decode_params()</tt>.
<P>
</LI>
<LI>The non-public function <tt class="function">email.Iterators._structure()</tt>
was added.
</LI>
</UL>
<P>
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<span class="release-info">Release 2.4.3, documentation updated on 29 March 2006.</span>
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