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Last active July 3, 2022 09:00
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Parsing emlx files on Mac OS X. Apple Proprietary Storage Format for emails.
#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8
"""emlx.py
Class to parse email stored with Apple proprietary emlx format
Created by Karl Dubost on 2013-03-30
Inspired by Rui Carmo — https://the.taoofmac.com/space/blog/2008/03/03/2211
MIT License"""
import email
import plistlib
class Emlx(object):
"""An apple proprietary emlx message"""
def __init__(self):
super(Emlx, self).__init__()
self.bytecount = 0
self.msg_data = None
self.msg_plist = None
def parse(self, filename_path):
"""return the data structure for the current emlx file
* an email object
* the plist structure as a dict data structure
"""
with open(filename_path, "rb") as f:
# extract the bytecount
self.bytecount = int(f.readline().strip())
# extract the message itself.
self.msg_data = email.message_from_bytes(f.read(self.bytecount))
# parsing the rest of the message aka the plist structure
self.msg_plist = plistlib.readPlistFromBytes(f.read())
return self.msg_data, self.msg_plist
if __name__ == '__main__':
msg = Emlx()
message, plist = msg.parse('your_message.emlx')
# print(message)
# Access to one of the email headers
print(message['subject'])
# Access to the plist data
print(plist)
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