For any future python travellers.
Here is a class that downloads any attachment found for an email and saves it to a specific location.
import email
import imaplib
import os
class FetchEmail():
connection = None
error = None
def __init__(self, mail_server, username, password):
self.connection = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(mail_server)
self.connection.login(username, password)
self.connection.select(readonly=False) # so we can mark mails as read
def close_connection(self):
"""
Close the connection to the IMAP server
"""
self.connection.close()
def save_attachment(self, msg, download_folder="/tmp"):
"""
Given a message, save its attachments to the specified
download folder (default is /tmp)
return: file path to attachment
"""
att_path = "No attachment found."
for part in msg.walk():
if part.get_content_maintype() == 'multipart':
continue
if part.get('Content-Disposition') is None:
continue
filename = part.get_filename()
att_path = os.path.join(download_folder, filename)
if not os.path.isfile(att_path):
fp = open(att_path, 'wb')
fp.write(part.get_payload(decode=True))
fp.close()
return att_path
def fetch_unread_messages(self):
"""
Retrieve unread messages
"""
emails = []
(result, messages) = self.connection.search(None, 'UnSeen')
if result == "OK":
for message in messages[0].split(' '):
try:
ret, data = self.connection.fetch(message,'(RFC822)')
except:
print "No new emails to read."
self.close_connection()
exit()
msg = email.message_from_bytes(data[0][1])
if isinstance(msg, str) == False:
emails.append(msg)
response, data = self.connection.store(message, '+FLAGS','\\Seen')
return emails
self.error = "Failed to retreive emails."
return emails
def parse_email_address(self, email_address):
"""
Helper function to parse out the email address from the message
return: tuple (name, address). Eg. ('John Doe', '[email protected]')
"""
return email.utils.parseaddr(email_address)