Delete all contents of a Gmail Folder. Good for cleaning up overloaded folders.

bulk_delete_gmail.py

import imaplib
import optparse

def delete_mail(email, password, label, search):
    mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
    mail.login(email, password)
    mail.select(label)
    
    typ, data = mail.search(None, search)
    for num in data[0].split():
        print mail.store(num, '+FLAGS', '\\Deleted')
        if int(num.strip()) % 100.0 == 0.0:
            print "EXPUNGE"
            mail.expunge()

    mail.expunge()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    parser = optparse.OptionParser()
    parser.add_option('-e', '--e-mail', dest='email', help='Email address to delete from.')
    parser.add_option('-p', '--password', dest='password', help='Email addresses password.')
    parser.add_option('-l', '--label', dest='label', default='Spam', help='Label where data we want to delete is located (Inbox, Alerter, Alert).')
    parser.add_option('-s', '--search', dest='search', default='ALL', help='Optional search param to reduce deletes.')
    (options, args) = parser.parse_args()

    delete_mail(options.email, options.password, options.label, options.search)