This is a smaller portion of a bigger project. I need to only get unread emails and a parse their headers. How can I modify the following script to only get unread emails?
conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(imap_server)
conn.login(imap_user, imap_password)
status, messages = conn.select('INBOX')
if status != "OK":
print "Incorrect mail box"
exit()
print messages
Something like this will do the trick.
conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(imap_server)
try:
(retcode, capabilities) = conn.login(imap_user, imap_password)
except:
print sys.exc_info()[1]
sys.exit(1)
conn.select(readonly=1) # Select inbox or default namespace
(retcode, messages) = conn.search(None, '(UNSEEN)')
if retcode == 'OK':
for num in messages[0].split(' '):
print 'Processing :', message
typ, data = conn.fetch(num,'(RFC822)')
msg = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
typ, data = conn.store(num,'-FLAGS','\\Seen')
if ret == 'OK':
print data,'\n',30*'-'
print msg
conn.close()
There's also a duplicate question here - Find new messages added to an imap mailbox since I last checked with python imaplib2?
Two useful functions for you to retrieve the body and attachments of the new message you detected (reference: How to fetch an email body using imaplib in python?) -
def getMsgs(servername="myimapserverfqdn"):
usernm = getpass.getuser()
passwd = getpass.getpass()
subject = 'Your SSL Certificate'
conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(servername)
conn.login(usernm,passwd)
conn.select('Inbox')
typ, data = conn.search(None,'(UNSEEN SUBJECT "%s")' % subject)
for num in data[0].split():
typ, data = conn.fetch(num,'(RFC822)')
msg = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
typ, data = conn.store(num,'-FLAGS','\\Seen')
yield msg
def getAttachment(msg,check):
for part in msg.walk():
if part.get_content_type() == 'application/octet-stream':
if check(part.get_filename()):
return part.get_payload(decode=1)
PS: If you pass by in 2020 after python 2.7 death: replace email.message_from_string(data[0][1]) with email.message_from_bytes(data[0][1])
The above answer does not actually work anymore or maybe never did but i modified it so it returns only unseen messages, it used to give : error cannot parse fetch command or something like that here is a working code :
mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
(retcode, capabilities) = mail.login('email','pass')
mail.list()
mail.select('inbox')
n=0
(retcode, messages) = mail.search(None, '(UNSEEN)')
if retcode == 'OK':
for num in messages[0].split() :
print 'Processing '
n=n+1
typ, data = mail.fetch(num,'(RFC822)')
for response_part in data:
if isinstance(response_part, tuple):
original = email.message_from_string(response_part[1])
print original['From']
print original['Subject']
typ, data = mail.store(num,'+FLAGS','\\Seen')
print n
I think the error was coming from the messages[0].split(' ') but the above code should work fine.
Also, note the +FLAGS instead of -FLAGS which flags the message as read.
EDIT 2020: If you pass by in 2020 after python 2.7 death: replace email.message_from_string(data[0][1]) with email.message_from_bytes(data[0][1])
You may use imap_tools package: https://pypi.org/project/imap-tools/
from imap_tools import MailBox, AND
with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('test@mail.com', 'password', 'INBOX') as mailbox:
# get unseen emails from INBOX folder
for msg in mailbox.fetch(AND(seen=False)):
print(msg.date, len(msg.html or msg.text))
original = email.message_from_string(response_part[1])
Needs to be changes to:
original = email.message_from_bytes(response_part[1])
I've managed to get this to work using Gmail:
import datetime
import email
import imaplib
import mailbox
EMAIL_ACCOUNT = "your@gmail.com"
PASSWORD = "your password"
mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
mail.login(EMAIL_ACCOUNT, PASSWORD)
mail.list()
mail.select('inbox')
result, data = mail.uid('search', None, "UNSEEN") # (ALL/UNSEEN)
i = len(data[0].split())
for x in range(i):
latest_email_uid = data[0].split()[x]
result, email_data = mail.uid('fetch', latest_email_uid, '(RFC822)')
# result, email_data = conn.store(num,'-FLAGS','\\Seen')
# this might work to set flag to seen, if it doesn't already
raw_email = email_data[0][1]
raw_email_string = raw_email.decode('utf-8')
email_message = email.message_from_string(raw_email_string)
# Header Details
date_tuple = email.utils.parsedate_tz(email_message['Date'])
if date_tuple:
local_date = datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(email.utils.mktime_tz(date_tuple))
local_message_date = "%s" %(str(local_date.strftime("%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S")))
email_from = str(email.header.make_header(email.header.decode_header(email_message['From'])))
email_to = str(email.header.make_header(email.header.decode_header(email_message['To'])))
subject = str(email.header.make_header(email.header.decode_header(email_message['Subject'])))
# Body details
for part in email_message.walk():
if part.get_content_type() == "text/plain":
body = part.get_payload(decode=True)
file_name = "email_" + str(x) + ".txt"
output_file = open(file_name, 'w')
output_file.write("From: %s\nTo: %s\nDate: %s\nSubject: %s\n\nBody: \n\n%s" %(email_from, email_to,local_message_date, subject, body.decode('utf-8')))
output_file.close()
else:
continue
I didn't like the existing solutions so I decided to make a sister library for my email sender called Red Box.
Here is an example of how to fetch new messages and process them:
from redbox import EmailBox
# Create email box instance
box = EmailBox(
host="imap.example.com",
port=993,
username="me@example.com",
password="<PASSWORD>"
)
# Select an email folder
inbox = box["INBOX"]
# Search and process messages
for msg in inbox.search(unseen=True):
# Process the message
print(msg.headers)
print(msg.from_)
print(msg.to)
print(msg.subject)
print(msg.text_body)
print(msg.html_body)
# Set the message as read/seen
msg.read()
There is also a query language if you need complex logical operations. You can also easily access various parts of the messages if needed.
To install:
pip install redbox
Links:
