Scaffolding for fetching and parsing emails from IMAP

email_from_imap.py

#!/usr/bin/python3
#
# Author: Riyad Preukschas <riyad@informatik.uni-bremen.de>
# License: Mozilla Public License 2.0
#
# Scaffolding for fetching and parsing emails from IMAP

import imaplib
import email.parser
import email.policy


IMAP_HOST = ''
IMAP_USER = ''
IMAP_PASSWORD = ''


# connect to server
with imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(IMAP_HOST) as imap:
    # login with user name and password
    imap.login(IMAP_USER, IMAP_PASSWORD)

    # select mail "folder" to work in
    imap.select('INBOX', readonly=True)

    # list ALL mails in folder ... can also be used to filter mails
    # see https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2060#section-6.4.4
    typ, data = imap.search(None, 'ALL')
    message_ids = data[0].split()

    for message_id in message_ids:
        # fetch "raw" email data
        typ, data = imap.fetch(message_id, '(RFC822)')
        response_part_rfc822_data = data[0][1]

        # create an EmailMessage object from the raw data
        msg = email.parser.BytesParser(
            policy=email.policy.default).parsebytes(response_part_rfc822_data)

        # do your stuff here ...
        # for access to specific parts of the email message
        # see https://docs.python.org/3/library/email.message.html#email.message.EmailMessage
        email_subject = msg['Subject']
        email_from = msg['From']
        # get email body in plain text form (instead of html)
        # ...  this might fail, because some mails are HTML-only :/
        email_text = msg.get_body('plain').get_content()

        print('From : ' + email_from + '\n')
        print('Subject : ' + email_subject + '\n')
        print(email_text)