poplib.retr doens't flag message as read

  • Thread starter EuGeNe Van den Bulke
  • Start date
E

EuGeNe Van den Bulke

Hi there,

I am trying to use the poplib library to get emails using the retr
method. The small program bellow works but the message aren't flagged as
read which puzzles me. I believe the pop server is qmail 1.0.6 /
vpopmail 5.2.1 and I am running the following script on Windows using
Pyhton 2.5.

import poplib
import email

pop = poplib.POP3('mail.server.com')
pop.user('(e-mail address removed)')
pop.pass_('password')
status, msg_list, octets = pop.list()

for msg_number in [msg.split(' ')[0] for msg in msg_list]:
status, lines, octets = pop.retr(msg_number)
msg = email.message_from_string('\n'.join(lines))

if not msg.is_multipart() and msg.get_content_type() == 'text/plain':
print msg.get('Subject')
print msg.get_payload()

pop.quit()

Why aren't the message flagged as read? Is there a way to manually mark
them read?

Thanks,

EuGeNe -- http://www.3kwa.com
 
G

Gabriel Genellina

En Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:14:58 -0300, EuGeNe Van den Bulke
I am trying to use the poplib library to get emails using the retr
method. The small program bellow works but the message aren't flagged as
read which puzzles me. I believe the pop server is qmail 1.0.6 /
vpopmail 5.2.1 and I am running the following script on Windows using
Pyhton 2.5.

The POP protocol has no concept of "read" or "unread" messages; the LIST
command simply shows all existing messages. You may want to use another
protocol, like IMAP, if the server supports it.

You could delete messages after successful retrieval, using the DELE
command. Only after a successful QUIT command will the server actually
delete them.
 
E

EuGeNe Van den Bulke

G

Gabriel Genellina

En Wed, 20 Jun 2007 06:42:15 -0300, EuGeNe Van den Bulke
Gabriel said:
The POP protocol has no concept of "read" or "unread" messages; the LIST
command simply shows all existing messages.

My mistake, I guess I was confused by the documentation

retr( which) Retrieve whole message number which, and set its seen flag.
Result is in form (response, ['line', ...], octets).

What is the seen flag? Nothing it seems
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-July/329888.html

Yes, sure, the docs are misleading. I'd just remove the reference to the
"seen flag".
 

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