What is a better way to edit email subjects
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21-12-2019 - |
Question
I have this issue where I need to periodically check a Gmail account and add subjects to emails with no subject. My current method is very hacky and I am hoping someone with more IMAP/Google API knowledge could suggest a better method.
Right now, my python script will check Gmail for messages and for emails with no subject, it will create a copy of the message and resend it (back to itself). Here is the code for that (authentication excluded:
# Select the inbox
mail.select()
# Get the UID of each email in the inbox with ""
subject typ, data = mail.uid('search', None, '(HEADER Subject "")')
# Loop for each of the emails with no subjects
for email_id in data[0].split():
print email_id
# Use the uid and get the email message
result, message = mail.uid('fetch', email_id, '(RFC822)')
raw_email = message[0][1]
email_msg = email.message_from_string(raw_email)
# Check that the subject is blank
if email_msg['Subject'] == '':
print email_msg['From']
print email_msg['To']
# Get the email payload
if email_msg.is_multipart():
payload = str(email_msg.get_payload()[0])
# Trim superfluous text from payload
payload = '\n'.join(payload.split('\n')[3:])
print payload
else:
payload = email_msg.get_payload()
# Create the new email message
msg = MIMEMultipart()
msg['From'] = email_msg['From']
msg['To'] = email_msg['To']
msg['Subject'] = 'No Subject Specified'
msg.attach(MIMEText(payload))
s = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.brandeis.edu')
print 'Sending Mail...'
print msg['To']
s.sendmail(email_msg['From'], [email_msg['To']], msg.as_string())
s.quit()
mail.close()
mail.logout()
I am hoping that there is a better way to do this with python's IMAP library or Google APIs that wouldn't involved resending the message.
Solution
There is no better way. Messages in IMAP are immutable — clients may cache them indefinitely. And some messages are signed too, quite a few these days, and your change likely breaks the signatures.