IMAP get sender name and body text?

Question

I am using this code:

import imaplib
mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
mail.login(myusername, mypassword)
mail.list()
# Out: list of "folders" aka labels in gmail.
mail.select("inbox") # connect to inbox.

result, data = mail.search(None, "ALL")

ids = data[0] # data is a list.
id_list = ids.split() # ids is a space separated string
latest_email_id = id_list[-1] # get the latest

result, data = mail.fetch(latest_email_id, "(RFC822)") # fetch the email body (RFC822) for the given ID

raw_email = data[0][1] # here's the body, which is raw text of the whole email
# including headers and alternate payloads

print raw_email

and it works, except, when I print raw_email it returns a bunch of extra information, how can I, parse, per say, the extra information and get just the From and body text?

Hydrangea

Answer 1

Python's email package is probably a good place to start.

import email
msg = email.message_from_string(raw_email)

print msg['From']
print msg.get_payload(decode=True)

That should do ask you ask, though when an email has multiple parts (attachments, text and HTML versions of the body, etc.) things are a bit more complicated.

In that case, msg.is_multipart() will return True and msg.get_payload() will return a list instead of a string. There's a lot more information in the email.message documentation.

Alternately, rather than parsing the raw RFC822-formatted message - which could be very large, if the email contains attachments - you could just ask the IMAP server for the information you want. Changing your mail.fetch line to:

mail.fetch(latest_email_id, "(BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (FROM)])")

Would just request (and return) the From line of the email from the server. Likewise setting the second parameter to "(UID BODY[TEXT])" would return the body of the email. RFC2060 has a list of parameters that should be valid here.

Countermeasure

Answer 2

IMAP high level lib: https://github.com/ikvk/imap_tools (I am author)

from imap_tools import MailBox, A
with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('[email protected]', 'password', 'INBOX') as mailbox:
    for msg in mailbox.fetch(A(all=True)):
        sender = msg.from_
        body = msg.text or msg.html

Almshouse

Thank you so much! The APIs of imaplib and Python's email package are driving my crazy, and this is SO MUCH BETTER! – Etna

@xjcl, enjoy =D – Almshouse

If you are advertising your own code, you need to be explicit about it. See our promotion policy. – Maihem

really cool lib, – Bloc

Answer 3

Alternatively, you can use Red Box (I'm the author):

from redbox import EmailBox

# Create email box instance
box = EmailBox(
    host="imap.example.com", 
    port=993,
    username="[email protected]",
    password="<PASSWORD>"
)

# Select an email folder
inbox = box["INBOX"]

# Search and process messages
for msg in inbox.search(all=True):

    # Process the message
    print(msg.from_)
    print(msg.to)
    print(msg.subject)
    print(msg.text_body)
    print(msg.html_body)

Some relevant links in the documentations:

• More about querying
• More about manipulating the message
• More about configuring the email box

To install:

pip install redbox

Links:

• Source code
• Documentation

Labarum