Check unread count of Gmail messages with Python

Question

How can I check the number of unread Gmail message in my inbox with a short Python script? Bonus points for retrieving the password from a file.

Solution 1

import imaplib
obj = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com','993')
obj.login('username','password')
obj.select()
obj.search(None,'UnSeen')

Solution 2

Well, I'm going to go ahead and spell out an imaplib solution as Cletus suggested. I don't see why people feel the need to use gmail.py or Atom for this. This kind of thing is what IMAP was designed for. Gmail.py is particularly egregious as it actually parses Gmail's HTML. That may be necessary for some things, but not to get a message count!

import imaplib, re
conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL("imap.gmail.com", 993)
conn.login(username, password)
unreadCount = re.search("UNSEEN (\d+)", conn.status("INBOX", "(UNSEEN)")[1][0]).group(1)

Pre-compiling the regex may improve performance slightly.

Solution 3

I advise you to use Gmail atom feed

It is as simple as this:

import urllib

url = 'https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/'
opener = urllib.FancyURLopener()
f = opener.open(url)
feed = f.read()

You can then use the feed parse function in this nice article: Check Gmail the pythonic way

Solution 4

For a complete implementation of reading the value from the atom feed:

import urllib2
import base64
from xml.dom.minidom import parse

def gmail_unread_count(user, password):
    """
        Takes a Gmail user name and password and returns the unread
        messages count as an integer.
    """
    # Build the authentication string
    b64auth = base64.encodestring("%s:%s" % (user, password))
    auth = "Basic " + b64auth

    # Build the request
    req = urllib2.Request("https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/")
    req.add_header("Authorization", auth)
    handle = urllib2.urlopen(req)

    # Build an XML dom tree of the feed
    dom = parse(handle)
    handle.close()

    # Get the "fullcount" xml object
    count_obj = dom.getElementsByTagName("fullcount")[0]
    # get its text and convert it to an integer
    return int(count_obj.firstChild.wholeText)

Solution 5

Well it isn't a code snippet but I imagine using imaplib and the Gmail IMAP instructions get you most of the way there.

View more solutions

Comments

[Nadia Alramli]

I checked the module source, what it does it open gmail in html mode and parse the page. This is bad! holovaty.com/code/gmail.py

[Matthew Flaschen]

What's so bad about IMAP? Note that this snippet is not complete, despite the "simple as this".

[Matthew Flaschen]

Also note that this solution will prompt the user for username, password on the TTY. However, you can subclass the opener to handle this.

[Tom]

While I happen to agree IMAP is the way to go here, there are some portability issues that could occur. Since the other methods are using HTTP connections, they could conceivably work when IMAP wouldn't (in restrictive environments like Google App Engine or on networks where non-HTTP traffic is restricted).

[Matthew Flaschen]

Tom, that's true. But the OP didn't say they were dealing with those limitations, so we should not invent them prematurely.

[Steven Hepting]

I really like this solution. Generally clean with only one import. To get the number you'd just: len(obj.search(None, 'UnSeen')[1][0].split())

[gennad]

It always returns unauthorized for me File "/opt/python2.7/lib/python2.7/urllib.py", line 379, in http_error_default raise IOError, ('http error', errcode, errmsg, headers) IOError: ('http error', 401, 'Unauthorized', <httplib.HTTPMessage instance at 0x126cc68>)

[DataGreed]

can I get message bodies and subjects with this solution?

[Samuel Lampa]

@DataGreed: With the search, you get only the mail id's, but you can then use that with "obj.fetch(..." to get the mails you want. See this link for example of how to do that: yuji.wordpress.com/2011/06/22/…

[Olli]

That gmail.py (fortunately) do not exist anymore.

[Bunyk]

Using this I got notification that someone just used my password to try to log in using unsecure app, with link to this doc: support.google.com/accounts/answer/…

[nurettin]

For those who are curious about connecting to gmail using imaplib, google will periodically disable 3rd party access and you will have to manually enable it. Better to create an app and use the gmail api instead.

[Ruslan]

Since June 2022 IMAP access no longer works.