I'm playing with Python imaplib (Python 2.6) to fetch emails from GMail. Everything I fetch an email with method http://docs.python.org/library/imaplib.html#imaplib.IMAP4.fetch I get whole email. I need only text part and also parse names of attachments, without downloading them. How this can be done? I see that emails returned by GMail follow the same format that browsers send to HTTP servers.
Take a look at this recipe: http://code.activestate.com/recipes/498189/
I adapted it slightly to print the From, Subject, Date, name of attachments, and message body (just plaintext for now -- its trivial to add html messages).
I used the Gmail pop3 server in this case, but it should work for IMAP as well.
import poplib, email, string
mailserver = poplib.POP3_SSL('pop.gmail.com')
mailserver.user('recent:YOURUSERNAME') #use 'recent mode'
mailserver.pass_('YOURPASSWORD') #consider not storing in plaintext!
numMessages = len(mailserver.list()[1])
for i in reversed(range(numMessages)):
message = ""
msg = mailserver.retr(i+1)
str = string.join(msg[1], "\n")
mail = email.message_from_string(str)
message += "From: " + mail["From"] + "\n"
message += "Subject: " + mail["Subject"] + "\n"
message += "Date: " + mail["Date"] + "\n"
for part in mail.walk():
if part.is_multipart():
continue
if part.get_content_type() == 'text/plain':
body = "\n" + part.get_payload() + "\n"
dtypes = part.get_params(None, 'Content-Disposition')
if not dtypes:
if part.get_content_type() == 'text/plain':
continue
ctypes = part.get_params()
if not ctypes:
continue
for key,val in ctypes:
if key.lower() == 'name':
message += "Attachment:" + val + "\n"
break
else:
continue
else:
attachment,filename = None,None
for key,val in dtypes:
key = key.lower()
if key == 'filename':
filename = val
if key == 'attachment':
attachment = 1
if not attachment:
continue
message += "Attachment:" + filename + "\n"
if body:
message += body + "\n"
print message
print
This should be enough to get you heading in the right direction.