Automatically reply to unread and unanswered messages in Python

autoreplyer.py

"""
Automatically replies to mails both unread and unanswered.

WARNING: This answers to any both unread and unanswered mail, even if it is years old.
         Don’t use on a mailbox with old messages left unread and unanswered.

Simply subclass ``AutoReplyer``, define the undefined class attribute,
and call the ``run`` method on an instance. This loops until you stop the script
(using Ctrl+C, typically) or until an error occurs, like a network failure.

Example usage:

    from autoreplyer import AutoReplyer

    class YourAutoReplyer(AutoReplyer):
        imap_server = 'your.imap.server'
        imap_port = 1234  # Custom port, only use if the default one doesn’t work.
        imap_user = 'your.imap.user@may-be-the-email-or-not.com'
        imap_password = 'your_password'

        smtp_server = 'your.smtp.server'
        smtp_port = 5678  # Custom port, only use if the default one doesn’t work.
        smtp_user = 'your.smtp.user@may-be-the-email-or-not.com'
        smtp_password = 'your_password'

        from_address = 'Your Displayed Name <your-email@address.com>'
        body = '''
        Hello,

        I’m on vacation until a date I should mention here.
        You’ll have an answer when I’m back.
        Call Django in case of emergency.

        Have a nice day,
        You
        '''
        body_html = '''
        <p>Hello</p>,

        <p>
            I’m on vacation until a date I should mention here.<br />
            You’ll have an answer when I’m back.<br />
            Call <a href="tel:+1234567890">Django</a> in case of emergency.
        </p>

        <p>
            Have a nice day,<br />
            You
        </p>
        '''

    YourAutoReplyer().run()
"""

from email import message_from_bytes
from email.mime.multipart import MIMEMultipart
from email.mime.text import MIMEText
from email.utils import make_msgid
from imaplib import IMAP4, IMAP4_SSL, IMAP4_PORT, IMAP4_SSL_PORT
from smtplib import SMTP, SMTP_SSL, SMTP_PORT, SMTP_SSL_PORT
from subprocess import call
from textwrap import dedent
from time import sleep


__author__ = 'Bertrand Bordage'
__copyright__ = 'Copyright © 2016 Bertrand Bordage'
__license__ = 'MIT'


class AutoReplyer:
    refresh_delay = 5  # seconds

    imap_server = None
    imap_use_ssl = False
    imap_port = IMAP4_PORT
    imap_ssl_port = IMAP4_SSL_PORT
    imap_user = None
    imap_password = None

    smtp_server = None
    smtp_use_ssl = False
    smtp_port = SMTP_PORT
    smtp_ssl_port = SMTP_SSL_PORT
    smtp_user = None
    smtp_password = None

    from_address = None
    body = None
    body_html = None

    def __init__(self):
        if self.imap_use_ssl:
            self.imap = IMAP4_SSL(self.imap_server, self.imap_ssl_port)
        else:
            self.imap = IMAP4(self.imap_server, self.imap_port)
        self.imap.login(self.imap_user, self.imap_password)
        if self.smtp_use_ssl:
            self.smtp = SMTP_SSL(self.smtp_server, self.smtp_ssl_port)
        else:
            self.smtp = SMTP(self.smtp_server, self.smtp_port)
        self.smtp.login(self.smtp_user, self.smtp_password)

    def close(self):
        self.smtp.close()
        self.imap.logout()

    def create_auto_reply(self, original):
        mail = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
        mail['Message-ID'] = make_msgid()
        mail['References'] = mail['In-Reply-To'] = original['Message-ID']
        mail['Subject'] = 'Re: ' + original['Subject']
        mail['From'] = self.from_address
        mail['To'] = original['Reply-To'] or original['From']
        mail.attach(MIMEText(dedent(self.body), 'plain'))
        mail.attach(MIMEText(self.body_html, 'html'))
        return mail

    def send_auto_reply(self, original):
        self.smtp.sendmail(
            self.from_address, [original['From']],
            self.create_auto_reply(original).as_bytes())
        log = 'Replied to “%s” for the mail “%s”' % (original['From'],
                                                     original['Subject'])
        print(log)
        try:
            call(['notify-send', log])
        except FileNotFoundError:
            pass

    def reply(self, mail_number):
        self.imap.select(readonly=True)
        _, data = self.imap.fetch(mail_number, '(RFC822)')
        self.imap.close()
        self.send_auto_reply(message_from_bytes(data[0][1]))
        self.imap.select(readonly=False)
        self.imap.store(mail_number, '+FLAGS', '\\Answered')
        self.imap.close()

    def check_mails(self):
        self.imap.select(readonly=False)
        _, data = self.imap.search(None, '(UNSEEN UNANSWERED)')
        self.imap.close()
        for mail_number in data[0].split():
            self.reply(mail_number)

    def run(self):
        try:
            while True:
                self.check_mails()
                sleep(self.refresh_delay)
        finally:
            self.close()

Hi,
Good work. But I am unable to import from autoreplyer module. I neither found this module on pypi.
Hence I am unable to run the code.

Could you please help.

Thank you. :0)

@satishrg007
I don't think autoreplyer is module. He gives us an example of how to use the file. The import is not from python libraries, but from the python file itself.

Reply email can not add original message,How can I resolve it

Thanks a lot. Almost exactly what I was looking for
I have uploaded a modified version at: https://gist.github.com/praul/68710409583eb19c8c1b12c12a9302ff that has rebound protection.
It uses a simple sqlite database to prevent autoresponder-ping-pong and send only a reply every 12 hours by default.

... I further modded this and made it to an own repo and docker-image: https://github.com/praul/autoreply
Thank you for the base script.

hello man, first of all congrats for the work, the code is very clean.
please, how do I specify a subject to reply?
I want to reply only a specific subject not all the emails.
tks

@brcelso You can modify send_auto_reply and add a condition like if original['Subject'] not in {'First subject you want to reply to', 'Second subject you want to reply to'}: return. Of course, I recommend you to not stick to just a few precise subjects, as it will not catch Re:orFwd:emails. You should probably use a regular expression or a simplein` to check that an expression is contained in the subject of the original mail.