Parsing IMAP responses in python

Question

I am using imaplib to work with imap in python, however it looks like it doesn't have means to parse the details of IMAP responses. For example, query like:

   msgdata = connection.fetch(num, "(BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (FROM TO CC DATE SUBJECT MESSAGE-ID)] UID)")

where num is the message number, for one mail server may produce (for example):

  ('OK', [('1234 (BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (FROM TO CC DATE SUBJECT MESSAGE-ID)] {123}', 'From: ...etc headers'), ' UID 3456)'])

and for another:

  ('OK', [('1234 (UID 3456 BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (FROM TO CC DATE SUBJECT MESSAGE-ID)] {123}', 'From: ...etc headers'), ')'])

As you see, the message details are different and UID is even in different element there. So the question is - is there some library that would allow to automatically sort it out and abstract the details of what particular mail server does?

Answer 1

Doug Hellman's Python Module of the Week entry for imaplib is a fairly extensive tutorial on the subject, but is far to long to reproduce here.

You might want to use a higher level library like IMAPClient to hide some of the details of the IMAP protocol.

Answer 2

Look at Imbox, you will probably find what your are looking for https://pypi.org/project/imbox/

Answer 3

You may use imap_tools package: https://pypi.org/project/imap-tools/

for message in mailbox.fetch():
    message.uid          # str or None, '123'
    message.subject      # str, 'some subject'
    message.from_        # str, 'sender@ya.ru'
    message.to           # tuple, ('iam@goo.ru', 'friend@ya.ru', )
    message.cc           # tuple, ('cc@mail.ru', )
    message.bcc          # tuple, ('bcc@mail.ru', )
    message.date         # datetime.datetime, 1900-1-1 for unparsed, may be naive or with tzinfo
    message.text         # str, 'hi'
    message.html         # str, '<b>hi</b>'
    message.flags        # tuple, ('SEEN', 'FLAGGED', 'ENCRYPTED')
    message.headers      # dict, {'Received': ('from 1.m.net', 'from 2.m.net'), 'AntiVirus-Status': ('Clean',)}
    message.attachments  # [(str, bytes)], 'cat.jpg', b'\xff\xd8\xff\xe0\'
    message.obj          # original email.message.Message object
    message.from_values  # dict or None, {'email': 'sender@ya.ru', 'name': 'Ivan', 'full': 'Ivan <sender@ya.ru>'}
    message.to_values    # tuple, ({'email': '', 'name': '', 'full': ''},)
    message.cc_values    # tuple, ({'email': '', 'name': '', 'full': ''},)
    message.bcc_values   # tuple, ({'email': '', 'name': '', 'full': ''},)
    message.date_str     # original date str, 'Tue, 03 Jan 2017 22:26:59 +0500'