How to fetch an email body using imaplib in python?
The IMAPClient package is a fair bit easier to work with. From the description:
Easy-to-use, Pythonic and complete IMAP client library.
Try my package: https://pypi.org/project/imap-tools/
example:
from imap_tools import MailBox
# get list of email bodies from INBOX folder
with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('[email protected]', 'password', 'INBOX') as mailbox:
bodies = [msg.text or msg.html for msg in mailbox.fetch()]
Features:
- Parsed email message attributes
- Query builder for searching emails
- Work with emails in folders (copy, delete, flag, move, append)
- Work with mailbox folders (list, set, get, create, exists, rename, delete, status)
- No dependencies
No... imaplib
is a pretty good library, it's imap that's so unintelligible.
You may wish to check that t == 'OK'
, but data[0][1]
works as expected for as much as I've used it.
Here's a quick example I use to extract signed certificates I've received by email, not bomb-proof, but suits my purposes:
import getpass, os, imaplib, email
from OpenSSL.crypto import load_certificate, FILETYPE_PEM
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)
if __name__ == '__main__':
for msg in getMsgs():
payload = getAttachment(msg,lambda x: x.endswith('.pem'))
if not payload:
continue
try:
cert = load_certificate(FILETYPE_PEM,payload)
except:
cert = None
if cert:
cn = cert.get_subject().commonName
filename = "%s.pem" % cn
if not os.path.exists(filename):
open(filename,'w').write(payload)
print "Writing to %s" % filename
else:
print "%s already exists" % filename
This was my solution to extract the useful bits of information. It's been reliable so far:
import datetime
import email
import imaplib
import mailbox
EMAIL_ACCOUNT = "[email protected]"
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