Check unread count of Gmail messages with Python

Well, I'm going to go ahead and spell out an imaplib solution as Cletus suggested. I don't see why people feel the need to use gmail.py or Atom for this. This kind of thing is what IMAP was designed for. Gmail.py is particularly egregious as it actually parses Gmail's HTML. That may be necessary for some things, but not to get a message count!

import imaplib, re
conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL("imap.gmail.com", 993)
conn.login(username, password)
unreadCount = re.search("UNSEEN (\d+)", conn.status("INBOX", "(UNSEEN)")[1][0]).group(1)

Pre-compiling the regex may improve performance slightly.

import imaplib
obj = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com','993')
obj.login('username','password')
obj.select()
obj.search(None,'UnSeen')