Checking email with Python

Question

I am interested to trigger a certain action upon receiving an email from specific address with specific subject. In order to be able to do so I need to implement monitoring of my mailbox, checking every incoming mail (in particular, i use gmail). what is the easiest way to do that?

Answer 1

Gmail provides the ability to connect over POP, which you can turn on in the gmail settings panel. Python can make connections over POP pretty easily:

import poplib
from email import parser

pop_conn = poplib.POP3_SSL('pop.gmail.com')
pop_conn.user('username')
pop_conn.pass_('password')
#Get messages from server:
messages = [pop_conn.retr(i) for i in range(1, len(pop_conn.list()[1]) + 1)]
# Concat message pieces:
messages = ["
".join(mssg[1]) for mssg in messages]
#Parse message intom an email object:
messages = [parser.Parser().parsestr(mssg) for mssg in messages]
for message in messages:
    print message['subject']
pop_conn.quit()

You would just need to run this script as a cron job. Not sure what platform you're on so YMMV as to how that's done.