Python Gmail IMAP : part 4

This is part 4 of my explanation of my gmail_imap (python) example library, please refer to parts 1, 2, 3.

The worst point of the module currently is the method to get a full message … gird your loins, then take a look:

        #gmail_messages.py
        def getMessage(self, server, mailbox, uid):
            if(not server.loggedIn):
                server.login()
            server.imap_server.select(mailbox)

            status, data = server.imap_server.uid('fetch',uid, 'RFC822')

The only thing strange in this code is the use of the imap_server.uid() function, which is a wrapper function for all the standard commands listed, and the use of a magic constant ‘RFC822′ which tells the IMAP server to send all the standard mail components.

        #Taken from http://discussion.forum.nokia.com/forum/showpost.php?p=640492&postcount=10
        messagePlainText = ''
        messageHTML = ''
        for response_part in data:
            if isinstance(response_part, tuple):
                msg = email.message_from_string(response_part[1])
                # http://docs.python.org/library/email.parser.html#email.message_from_string

                for part in msg.walk():   #http://docs.python.org/library/email.message.html
                    if str(part.get_content_type()) == 'text/plain':
                        messagePlainText = messagePlainText + str(part.get_payload())
                    if str(part.get_content_type()) == 'text/html':
                        messageHTML = messageHTML + str(part.get_payload())

        #create new message object
        message = gmail_message()
        ... populate message fields ...
        return message

The specifics of those steps are available at the urls provided and are fairly readable. Once again the response back from the fetch call is a tuple (status, email_string) which the python package email can interpret with email.message_from_string(email_string). The end result is pushed into a gmail_message object, and returned to the caller.

A quick note about gmail_message.py which encapulates the gmail_message structure:

The boiler plate __init__ / __repr__ of the gmail_message code is a bit too long to post.  Needless to say, it’s all pretty readable, the only interesting part is that the gmail_message.Subject member defaults to ‘( no subject )’ instead of None.  This may be a bad call, but it makes life simpler for the moment, as this means we don’t need to check if a subject exists when using a message later; every message is contracted to have a subject.

Phew…several posts later, what do we have? A half-way viable method to interact with gmail imap in python, without needing fragile libraries, without downloading every email in our gmail account, and without insulting the hard working people of the Python libraries or Google. Well, maybe not that last part.

If you download the module and collect all the files together, you will be able to make calls like:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import getpass

    gmail = gmail_imap(getpass.getuser(),getpass.getpass())

    gmail.mailboxes.load()
    print gmail.mailboxes

    gmail.messages.process("INBOX")
    print gmail.messages

    #Print the full message text for the first two messages in the box
    for message_stub in gmail.messages[0:2]:
      message = gmail.messages.getMessage(message_stub.uid)
      print message
      print message.Body

    gmail.logout()

You can download all the code in this example, from the
github code repo. Feel free to fork it.

And leave me a comment to know you put up with my snark all the way to the end.

About these ads