imaplib.error: command FETCH illegal in state AUTH
I'm trying to download attachments from Gmail, using a combination of pieces of code I found online, and some editing from myself. However, the following code:
import email, getpass, imaplib, os, random, time
import oauth2 as oauth
import oauth2.clients.imap as imaplib
MY_EMAIL = '[email protected]'
MY_TOKEN = "token"
MY_SECRET = "secret"
consumer = oauth.Consumer('anonymous', 'anonymous')
token = oauth.Token(MY_TOKEN, MY_SECRET)
url = "https://mail.google.com/mail/b/"+MY_EMAIL+"/imap/"
m = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
m.authenticate(url, consumer, token)
m.select('INBOX')
items = m.select("UNSEEN");
items = items[0].split()
for emailid in items:
data = m.fetch(emailid, "(RFC822)")
returns this error:
imaplib.error: command FETCH illegal in state AUTH
Why would Fetch be illegal while I'm authorized?
Answer
You're lacking error checking on your calls to select. Typically, this is how I'll structure the first parts of a connection to a mailbox:
# self.conn is an instance of IMAP4 connected to my server.
status, msgs = self.conn.select('INBOX')
if status != 'OK':
return # could be break, or continue, depending on surrounding code.
msgs = int(msgs[0])
Essentially, the trouble you're encountering is that you've selected a mailbox that doesn't exist, your status message is probably not "OK" as it should be, and the value you're iterating over isn't valid. Remember, select expects a mailbox name. It does not search based on a flag (which may be what you're attempting with "UNSEEN"). When you select a non-existent mail box you actually get this as a response:
('NO', ['The requested item could not be found.'])
In which case, for email id in items is not operating properly. Not what you're after in any way, unfortunately. What you'd get on a valid mailbox would be like this:
('OK', ['337'])
Hope that helps.
To address the question in comments, if you want to actually retrieve the unseen messages in the mailbox you'd use this:
status, msgs = self.conn.select('INBOX')
# returns ('OK', ['336'])
status, ids = self.conn.search(None, 'UNSEEN')
# returns ('OK', ['324 325 326 336'])
if status == 'OK':
ids = map(int, ids[0].split())
The response is going to be similar to the response from select, but instead of a single integer for the number of messages you'll get a list of ids.