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This is the second part of the article series ‘Playing With Python And Gmail’. If you didn’t read the first part I would recomend you to read it.

This time we will see how to fetch mails from Gmail using Python.

Reading Mails

The IMAP4.fetch method fetch (parts of) messages. message_parts should be a string of message part names enclosed within parentheses, eg: “(UID BODY[TEXT])”. Returned data are tuples of message part envelope and data.

Here is a minimal example (without error checking) that opens a mailbox and retrieves and prints all messages:

import imaplib
 
M = imaplib.IMAP4('imap.gmail.com', 993)
M.login('myname@gmail.com', 'pa$$word')
M.select()
typ, data = M.search(None, 'ALL')
for num in data[0].split():
    typ, data = M.fetch(num, '(RFC822)')
    print 'Message %s\n%s\n' % (num, data[0][1])
M.close()
M.logout()

The email package provides a standard parser that understands most email document structures, including MIME documents. You can pass the parser a string or a file object, and the parser will return to you the root Message instance of the object structure. For simple, non-MIME messages the payload of this root object will likely be a string containing the text of the message. For MIME messages, the root object will return True from its is_multipart() method, and the subparts can be accessed via the get_payload() and walk() methods.

Extract Mail Headers
Here is method to retrieve from, to and subject from from an email message:

from email.parser import HeaderParser
 
resp, data = M.FETCH(1, '(RFC822)')
msg = HeaderParser().parsestr(data[0][1])
 
print msg['From']
print msg['To']
print msg['Subject']
 
M.LOGOUT()

Output will be something like.

Gmail Team
My Name
Gmail is different. Here's what you need to know.

Identifying the content type
The Content-Type header indicates the Internet media type of the message content, consisting of a type and subtype, for example text/plain is the default value for “Content-Type:”
Gmail uses alternative content, such as a message sent in both plain text and another format such as HTML (multipart/alternative with the same content in text/plain and text/html forms).

import email
 
resp, data = M.FETCH(1, '(RFC822)')
mail = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
 
for part in mail.walk():
  print 'Content-Type:',part.get_content_type()
  print 'Main Content:',part.get_content_maintype()
  print 'Sub Content:',part.get_content_subtype()

Out put will be

Content-Type: multipart/alternative
Main Content: multipart
Sub Content: alternative
Content-Type: text/plain
Main Content: text
Sub Content: plain
Content-Type: text/html
Main Content: text
Sub Content: html

Extract Message Body.
Using the walk() method we can iterate through Message parts. The get_payload() method will return the current payload, which will be a list of Message objects when is_multipart() is True, or a string when is_multipart() is False.

import email
 
resp, data = M.FETCH(1, '(RFC822)')
mail = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
 
for part in mail.walk():
  # multipart are just containers, so we skip them
  if part.get_content_maintype() == 'multipart':
      continue
 
  # we are interested only in the simple text messages
  if part.get_content_subtype() != 'plain':
    continue
 
  payload = part.get_payload()
  print payload
 
M.LOGOUT()

Extracting Attachmets
The below code will extract and save attached images to disk.

import re
 
name_pat = re.compile('name=\".*\"')
 
for part in mail.walk():
  if part.get_content_maintype() != 'image':
    continue
 
  file_type = part.get_content_type().split('/')[1]
  if not file_type:
    file_type = 'jpg'
 
  filename = part.get_filename()
  if not filename:
    filename = name_pat.findall(part.get('Content-Type'))[0][6:-1]
 
  counter = 1
  if not filename:
    filename = 'img-%03d%s' % (counter, file_type)
    counter += 1
 
  payload = part.get_payload(decode=True)
 
  if not os.path.isfile(filename) :
      # finally write the stuff
      fp = open(filename, 'wb')
      fp.write(part.get_payload(decode=True))
      fp.close()

That’s it. In the next part I will explain searching and moving your mails using Python. Dont forget to subscribe