AWS SQS: Sending dynamic message using boto - python-2.7

Question

I have a working python/boto script which posts a message to my AWS SQS queue. The message body however is hardcoded into the script.
I creates a file called ~/file which contains two values
$ cat ~/file
Username 'encrypted_password_string'
I would like my boto script (see below) to send a message to my AWS SQS queue that contains these two values.
Can anyone please advise how to modify my script below so the message body sent to SQS contains the contents of file ~/file. Please also take note of the special characters that exists within a encrypted password string
Example:
~/file
username d5MopV/EsfSKk8BExCyLHFwNfBrOTzQ1
#!/usr/bin/env python
conf = {
"sqs-access-key": "xxxx",
"sqs-secret-key": "xxxx",
"sqs-queue-name": "UserPassChange",
"sqs-region": "xxxx",
"sqs-path": "sqssend"
}
import boto.sqs
conn = boto.sqs.connect_to_region(
conf.get('sqs-region'),
aws_access_key_id = conf.get('sqs-access-key'),
aws_secret_access_key = conf.get('sqs-secret-key')
)
q = conn.create_queue(conf.get('sqs-queue-name'))
from boto.sqs.message import RawMessage
m = RawMessage()
m.set_body('hardcoded message')
retval = q.write(m)
print 'added message, got retval: %s' % retval
one way to get it working:
in the script I added
import commands
then added,
USERNAME = commands.getoutput("echo $(who am i | awk '{print $1}')")
PASS = commands.getoutput("cat /tmp/.s")
and then added these values to my message body :
MSG = RawMessage()
MSG.set_body(json.dumps({'pass': PASS, 'user': USERNAME}))

Answer 1

The following example shows how to use Boto3 to send a file to a receiver.
test_sqs.py
import boto3
from moto import mock_sqs
#mock_sqs
def test_sqs():
sqs = boto3.resource('sqs', 'us-east-1')
queue = sqs.create_queue(QueueName='votes')
queue.send_message(MessageBody=open('beer.txt').read())
messages = queue.receive_messages()
assert len(messages) == 1
assert messages[0].body == 'tasty\n'