POP3 and email

P

Paul Schmidt

Dear list:

I am new to python, and I am trying to figure out the short answer on
something.

I want to open a POP3 mailbox, read the enclosed mail using the POP3
module, , and then process it using the email module.

Environment Python 2.3.4, Mandrake Linux 9.0 patched up the wazoo...

There is some stuff that isn't clear here, can I pass the POP3 message
directly to email for processing, or does it need to be saved to a
temporary file somewhere first? The emails being received will consist
of headers, a tiny amount of text, and one or more MIME attachments.

Let me explain the project, and then this should all make sense.


I havc one or more people going to an event, they will send emails to a
special email address, of stuff to go on a website. This is an HTML
page, which could have one or more photos attached to display in the
page once the HTML is processed, the whole thing gets FTP to the web.

Paul










Any ideas?

Paul
 
W

William Park

Paul Schmidt said:
Dear list:

I am new to python, and I am trying to figure out the short answer on
something.

I want to open a POP3 mailbox, read the enclosed mail using the POP3
module, , and then process it using the email module.

Environment Python 2.3.4, Mandrake Linux 9.0 patched up the wazoo...

There is some stuff that isn't clear here, can I pass the POP3 message
directly to email for processing, or does it need to be saved to a
temporary file somewhere first? The emails being received will consist
of headers, a tiny amount of text, and one or more MIME attachments.

Let me explain the project, and then this should all make sense.


I havc one or more people going to an event, they will send emails to a
special email address, of stuff to go on a website. This is an HTML
page, which could have one or more photos attached to display in the
page once the HTML is processed, the whole thing gets FTP to the web.

Probably, HTML form would be better interface for this kind of thing.
But, in any case, you have Linux. This also means you already have
Procmail/Fetchmail/Sendmail at your fingertips.
 
P

pythonhda

There is some stuff that isn't clear here, can I pass the POP3 message
directly to email for processing, or does it need to be saved to a
temporary file somewhere first? The emails being received will consist
of headers, a tiny amount of text, and one or more MIME attachments.

Yes you can pass the POP3 message directly. IIRC, when you download a message
you'll get a tuple back that looks something like (response_code, message, size).
The "message" is a list of lines in the message.

To have the email package process the message, you can do something like:
import email.Parser
myemail = email.Parser.Parser().parsestr('\n'.join(mesg[1]))

Where mesg is the full tuple that you downloaded. You can use the "get" methods

If it is multipart, use the "walk" method to iterate through each part and the
get the payload.
.... mypart = part.get_payload()
.... # do something

Check out Text Processing in Python: http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/
It's a great book to buy, chapter 5 is about the email module among other things.
 
P

Paul Schmidt

William said:
Probably, HTML form would be better interface for this kind of thing.
But, in any case, you have Linux. This also means you already have
Procmail/Fetchmail/Sendmail at your fingertips.

Except that the HTML page is attached, it's not the message itself, and
could be contained in an archive along with the pictures. Problem with
Procmail/Fetchmail/Sendmail, is the you the need to read the mbox file,
which is fine if the email module can do that.

Paul
 
L

Larry Bates

I knocked out exactly what you are looking for (I
think??) today. Probably not the most 'elegant'
way, but works for me and seems to be easy to use.


Good luck,
Larry Bates
Syscon, Inc.

import poplib
import email
import email.Parser
import os
import sys

class email_attachment:
def __init__(self, messagenum, attachmentnum, filename, contents):
'''
arguments:

messagenum - message number of this message in the Inbox
attachmentnum - attachment number for this attachment
filename - filename for this attachment
contents - attachment's contents
'''
self.messagenum=messagenum
self.attachmentnum=attachmentnum
self.filename=filename
self.contents=contents
return

def save(self, savepath, savefilename=None):
'''
Method to save the contents of an attachment to a file
arguments:

savepath - path where file is to be saved
safefilename - optional name (if None will use filename of
attachment
'''

savefilename=savefilename or self.filename
f=open(os.path.join(savepath, savefilename),"wb")
f.write(self.contents)
f.close()
return

class email_msg:
def __init__(self, messagenum, contents):
self.messagenum=messagenum
self.contents=contents
self.attachments_index=0 # Index of attachments for next method
self.ATTACHMENTS=[] # List of attachment objects

self.msglines='\n'.join(contents[1])
#
# See if I can parse the message lines with email.Parser
#
self.msg=email.Parser.Parser().parsestr(self.msglines)
if self.msg.is_multipart():
attachmentnum=0
for part in self.msg.walk():
# multipart/* are just containers
mptype=part.get_content_maintype()
filename = part.get_filename()
if mptype == "multipart": continue
if filename: # Attached object with filename
attachmentnum+=1
self.ATTACHMENTS.append(email_attachment(messagenum,
attachmentnum,
filename,
part.get_payload(decode=1)))
print "Attachment filename=%s" % filename

else: # Must be body portion of multipart
self.body=part.get_payload()

else: # Not multipart, only body portion exists
self.body=self.msg.get_payload()

return


def get(self, key):
try: return self.msg.get(key)
except:
emsg="email_msg-Unable to get email key=%s information" % key
print emsg
sys.exit(emsg)

def has_attachments(self):
return (len(self.ATTACHMENTS) > 0)

def __iter__(self):
return self

def next(self):
#
# Try to get the next attachment
#
try: ATTACHMENT=self.ATTACHMENTS[self.attachments_index]
except:
self.attachments_index=0
raise StopIteration
#
# Increment the index pointer for the next call
#
self.attachments_index+=1
return ATTACHMENT

class pop3_inbox:
def __init__(self, server, userid, password):
self._trace=0
if self._trace: print "pop3_inbox.__init__-Entering"
self.result=0 # Result of server communication
self.MESSAGES=[] # List for storing message objects
self.messages_index=0 # Index of message for next method
#
# See if I can connect using information provided
#
try:
if self._trace: print "pop3_inbox.__init__-Calling
poplib.POP3(server)"
self.connection=poplib.POP3(server)
if self._trace: print "pop3_inbox.__init__-Calling
connection.user(userid)"
self.connection.user(userid)
if self._trace: print "pop3_inbox.__init__-Calling
connection.pass_(password)"
self.connection.pass_(password)

except:
if self._trace: print "pop3_inbox.__init__-Login failure,
closing connection"
self.result=1
self.connection.quit()

#
# Get count of messages and size of mailbox
#
if self._trace: print "pop3_inbox.__init__-Calling
connection.stat()"
self.msgcount, self.size=self.connection.stat()
#
# Loop over all the messages processing each one in turn
#
for msgnum in range(1, self.msgcount+1):
self.MESSAGES.append(email_msg(msgnum,
self.connection.retr(msgnum)))

if self._trace: print "pop3_inbox.__init__-Leaving"
return

def close(self):
self.connection.quit()
return

def remove(self, msgnumorlist):
if isinstance(msgnumorlist, int): self.connection.dele(msgnumorlist)
elif isinstance(msgnumorlist, (list, tuple)):
map(self.connection.dele, msgnumorlist)
else:
emsg="pop3_inbox.remove-msgnumorlist must be type int, list, or
tuple, not %s" % type(msgnumorlist)
print emsg
sys.exit(emsg)

return

def __iter__(self):
return self

def next(self):
#
# Try to get the next attachment
#
try: MESSAGE=self.MESSAGES[self.messages_index]
except:
self.messages_index=0
raise StopIteration
#
# Increment the index pointer for the next call
#
self.messages_index+=1
return MESSAGE

if __name__=="__main__":
server="" # set server here
userid="" # set userid here
password="" # set password here
inbox=pop3_inbox(server, userid, password)
if inbox.result:
emsg="Failure connecting to pop3_inbox"
print emsg
sys.exit(emsg)

print "Message count=%i, Inbox size=%i" % (inbox.msgcount, inbox.size)

counter=0
for m in inbox:
counter+=1
print "Subject: %s" % m.get('subject')
print "-------------Message (%i) body lines---------------" %
counter
print m.body
print "-------------End message (%i) body lines-----------" %
counter
if m.has_attachments():
acounter=0
for a in m:
acounter+=1
print "-------------Message (%i) attachments-------------" %
counter
print "%i: %s" % (acounter, a.filename)
print "-------------End message (%i) attachments---------" %
counter
a.save(r"C:\temp")

else: print "-------------Message has no attachments----------"

#
# See if I can delete all messages
#
#if inbox.msgcount: inbox.remove(range(1, inbox.msgcount+1))
inbox.close()
 

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