Python - Expected a character buffer object?

Question

I have the following code:

import imaplib
import email
import codecs
mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
mail.login('[email protected]', 'pass')
mail.list()

mail.select("inbox") 

result, data = mail.uid('search', None, "ALL")
i = len(data[0].split())

for x in range(i):
    latest_email_uid = data[0].split()[x]
    result, email_data = mail.uid('fetch', latest_email_uid, '(RFC822)')
    raw_email = email_data[0][1]
    email_message = email.message_from_string(raw_email)
    save_string = str("/Users/Me/Desktop/Email/" + str(x) + ".txt") 
    myfile = open(save_string, 'a')
    myfile.write(email_message)
    myfile.close()

(I am trying to export all the email as a txt file.)

I get the error expected a character buffer object.

Does anyone know why this would be?

Thanks

Edit: Error is in line myfile.write(email_message)

Solution 1

email.message_from_string(raw_email) is not returning a string, but a Message object instead. You cannot write Message objects directly to a file without serializing them in some way.

Solution 2

All you have to do is to convert email_message to a string.

myfile.write(str(email_message))