imap_tools

Working with email and mailbox using IMAP protocol.

Python version	3.3+
License	Apache-2.0
PyPI	https://pypi.python.org/pypi/imap_tools/
IMAP	VERSION 4rev1 - https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3501

Contents

• Features
• Installation
• Guide
  • Basic
  • Email attributes
  • Search criteria
  • Actions with emails in folder
  • Actions with mailbox folders
• Reasons
• Release notes
• Contribute

Features

• Parsed email message attributes
• Query builder for searching emails
• Work with emails in folders (copy, delete, flag, move, seen)
• Work with mailbox folders (list, set, get, create, exists, rename, delete, status)
• No dependencies

Installation

$ pip install imap_tools

Guide

Basic

from imap_tools import MailBox, Q

# get list of email subjects from INBOX folder
with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('[email protected]', 'password') as mailbox:
    subjects = [msg.subject for msg in mailbox.fetch()]

# OR the same otherwise
mailbox = MailBox('imap.mail.com')
mailbox.login('[email protected]', 'password', initial_folder='INBOX')
subjects = [msg.subject for msg in mailbox.fetch(Q(all=True))]
mailbox.logout()

MailBox.fetch - email message generator, first searches email ids by criteria, then fetch and yields emails by one:

• criteria: message search criteria, docs
• charset: 'US-ASCII', indicates charset of the strings that appear in the search criteria. See rfc2978
• limit: None, limit on the number of read emails, useful for actions with a large number of messages, like "move"
• miss_defect: True, miss emails with defects
• miss_no_uid: True, miss emails without uid
• mark_seen: True, mark emails as seen on fetch
• reverse: False, in order from the larger date to the smaller

Email attributes

# NOTE: All message properties are cached by functools.lru_cache

for message in mailbox.fetch():
    message.uid              # str or None: '123'
    message.subject          # str: 'some subject'
    message.from_            # str: '[email protected]'
    message.to               # tuple: ('[email protected]', '[email protected]', )
    message.cc               # tuple: ('[email protected]', )
    message.bcc              # tuple: ('[email protected]', )
    message.reply_to         # tuple: ('[email protected]', )
    message.date             # datetime.datetime: 1900-1-1 for unparsed, may be naive or with tzinfo
    message.date_str         # str: original date - 'Tue, 03 Jan 2017 22:26:59 +0500'
    message.text             # str: 'hi'
    message.html             # str: '<b>hi</b>'
    message.flags            # tuple: ('SEEN', 'FLAGGED', 'ENCRYPTED')
    message.headers          # dict: {'Received': ('from 1.m.ru', 'from 2.m.ru'), 'AntiVirus': ('Clean',)}

    for att in message.attachments:  # list: [Attachment objects]
        att.filename         # str: 'cat.jpg'
        att.content_type     # str: 'image/jpeg'
        att.payload          # bytes: b'\xff\xd8\xff\xe0\'

    message.obj              # email.message.Message: original object
    message.from_values      # dict or None: {'email': '[email protected]', 'name': 'Van', 'full': 'Van <[email protected]>'}
    message.to_values        # tuple: ({'email': '', 'name': '', 'full': ''},)
    message.cc_values        # tuple: ({'email': '', 'name': '', 'full': ''},)
    message.bcc_values       # tuple: ({'email': '', 'name': '', 'full': ''},)
    message.reply_to_values  # tuple: ({'email': '', 'name': '', 'full': ''},)

Search criteria

Possible search approaches:

from imap_tools import Q, AND, OR, NOT

mailbox.fetch(Q(subject='weather'))  # query, the str-like object - see below
mailbox.fetch('TEXT "hello"')  # str
mailbox.fetch(b'TEXT "\xd1\x8f"')  # bytes

Implemented query builder for search logic described in rfc3501. See query examples.

• Class AND and its alias Q are used to combine keys by the logical "and" condition.
• Class OR is used to combine keys by the logical "or" condition.
• Class NOT is used to invert the result of a logical expression.
• Class H (Header) is used to search by headers.

If the "charset" argument is specified in MailBox.fetch, the search string will be encoded to this encoding. You can change this behavior by overriding MailBox._criteria_encoder or pass criteria as bytes in desired encoding.

from imap_tools import Q, AND, OR, NOT
# AND
Q(text='hello', new=True)  # '(TEXT "hello" NEW)'
# OR
OR(text='hello', date=datetime.date(2000, 3, 15))  # '(OR TEXT "hello" ON 15-Mar-2000)'
# NOT
NOT(text='hello', new=True)  # 'NOT (TEXT "hello" NEW)'
# complex
Q(OR(from_='[email protected]', text='"the text"'), NOT(OR(Q(answered=False), Q(new=True))), to='[email protected]')
# encoding
mailbox.fetch(Q(subject='привет'), charset='utf8')  # 'привет' will be encoded by MailBox._criteria_encoder
# python note: you can't do: Q(text='two', NOT(subject='one'))
Q(NOT(subject='one'), text='two')  # use kwargs after logic classes

The search key types are marked with * can accepts a sequence of values like list, tuple, set or generator.

Key	Types	Results	Description
answered	bool	ANSWERED|UNANSWERED	with|without the Answered flag
seen	bool	SEEN|UNSEEN	with|without the Seen flag
flagged	bool	FLAGGED|UNFLAGGED	with|without the Flagged flag
draft	bool	DRAFT|UNDRAFT	with|without the Draft flag
deleted	bool	DELETED|UNDELETED	with|without the Deleted flag
keyword	str*	KEYWORD KEY	with the specified keyword flag
no_keyword	str*	UNKEYWORD KEY	without the specified keyword flag
from_	str*	FROM "[email protected]"	contain specified str in envelope struct's FROM field
to	str*	TO "[email protected]"	contain specified str in envelope struct's TO field
subject	str*	SUBJECT "hello"	contain specified str in envelope struct's SUBJECT field
body	str*	BODY "some_key"	contain specified str in body of the message
text	str*	TEXT "some_key"	contain specified str in header or body of the message
bcc	str*	BCC "[email protected]"	contain specified str in envelope struct's BCC field
cc	str*	CC "[email protected]"	contain specified str in envelope struct's CC field
date	datetime.date*	ON 15-Mar-2000	internal date is within specified date
date_gte	datetime.date*	SINCE 15-Mar-2000	internal date is within or later than the specified date
date_lt	datetime.date*	BEFORE 15-Mar-2000	internal date is earlier than the specified date
sent_date	datetime.date*	SENTON 15-Mar-2000	rfc2822 Date: header is within the specified date
sent_date_gte	datetime.date*	SENTSINCE 15-Mar-2000	rfc2822 Date: header is within or later than the specified date
sent_date_lt	datetime.date*	SENTBEFORE 1-Mar-2000	rfc2822 Date: header is earlier than the specified date
size_gt	int >= 0	LARGER 1024	rfc2822 size larger than specified number of octets
size_lt	int >= 0	SMALLER 512	rfc2822 size smaller than specified number of octets
new	True	NEW	have the Recent flag set but not the Seen flag
old	True	OLD	do not have the Recent flag set
recent	True	RECENT	have the Recent flag set
all	True	ALL	all, criteria by default
uid	iter(str)|str	UID 1,2,17	corresponding to the specified unique identifier set
header	H(str, str)*	HEADER "A-Spam" "5.8"	have a header that contains the specified str in the text

Server side search notes:

• For string search keys a message matches if the string is a substring of the field. The matching is case-insensitive.
• When searching by dates - email's time and timezone are disregarding.

Actions with emails in folder

You can use 2 approaches to perform these operations:

• "in bulk" - Perform IMAP operation for message set per 1 command
• "by one" - Perform IMAP operation for each message separately per N commands

Result of MailBox.fetch generator will be implicitly converted to uid list.

with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('[email protected]', 'pwd', initial_folder='INBOX') as mailbox:

    # COPY all messages from current folder to folder1, *by one
    for msg in mailbox.fetch():
        res = mailbox.copy(msg.uid, 'INBOX/folder1')

    # MOVE all messages from current folder to folder2, *in bulk (implicit creation of uid list)
    mailbox.move(mailbox.fetch(), 'INBOX/folder2')

    # DELETE all messages from current folder, *in bulk (explicit creation of uid list)
    mailbox.delete([msg.uid for msg in mailbox.fetch()])

    # FLAG unseen messages in current folder as Answered and Flagged, *in bulk.
    flags = (imap_tools.MessageFlags.ANSWERED, imap_tools.MessageFlags.FLAGGED)
    mailbox.flag(mailbox.fetch('(UNSEEN)'), flags, True)

    # SEEN: mark all messages sent at 05.03.2007 in current folder as unseen, *in bulk
    mailbox.seen(mailbox.fetch("SENTON 05-Mar-2007"), False)

Actions with mailbox folders

with MailBox('imap.mail.com').login('[email protected]', 'pwd') as mailbox:
    # LIST
    for folder_info in mailbox.folder.list('INBOX'):
        print(folder_info)  # {'name': 'INBOX|cats', 'delim': '|', 'flags': '\\Unmarked \\HasChildren'}
    # SET
    mailbox.folder.set('INBOX')
    # GET
    current_folder = mailbox.folder.get()
    # CREATE
    mailbox.folder.create('folder1')
    # EXISTS
    is_exists = mailbox.folder.exists('folder1')
    # RENAME
    mailbox.folder.rename('folder1', 'folder2')
    # DELETE
    mailbox.folder.delete('folder2')
    # STATUS
    folder_status = mailbox.folder.status('some_folder')
    print(folder_status)  # {'MESSAGES': 41, 'RECENT': 0, 'UIDNEXT': 11996, 'UIDVALIDITY': 1, 'UNSEEN': 5}

Reasons

• Excessive low level of imaplib library.
• Other libraries contain various shortcomings or not convenient.
• Open source projects makes world better.

Release notes

release_notes.rst

Contribute

If you found a bug or have a question, please let me know - create merge request or issue.

Thanks to:

• shilkazx
• somepad
• 0xThiebaut
• TpyoKnig
• parchd-1
• dojasoncom
• RandomStrangerOnTheInternet
• jonnyarnold
• Mitrich3000
• audemed44