Python : How to parse things such as : from, to, body, from a raw email source w/Python

Question

The raw email usually looks something like this

From [email protected] Thu Jul 25 19:28:59 2013
Received: from a1.local.tld (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by a1.local.tld (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r6Q2SxeQ003866
    for <[email protected]>; Thu, 25 Jul 2013 19:28:59 -0700
Received: (from root@localhost)
    by a1.local.tld (8.14.4/8.14.4/Submit) id r6Q2Sxbh003865;
    Thu, 25 Jul 2013 19:28:59 -0700
From: [email protected]
Subject: ooooooooooooooooooooooo
To: [email protected]
Cc: 
X-Originating-IP: 192.168.15.127
X-Mailer: Webmin 1.420
Message-Id: <1374805739.3861@a1>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 19:28:59 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="bound1374805739"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--bound1374805739
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

--bound1374805739--

So if I wanted to code a PYTHON script to get the

From
To
Subject
Body

Is this the code I am looking for to built on of or is there a better method?

a='<title>aaa</title><title>aaa2</title><title>aaa3</title>'

import re
a1 = re.findall(r'<(title)>(.*?)<(/title)>', a)

Solution 1

I don't really understand what your final code snippet has to do with anything - you haven't mentioned anything about HTML until that point, so I don't know why you would suddenly be giving an example of parsing HTML (which you should never do with a regex anyway).

In any case, to answer your original question about getting the headers from an email message, Python includes code to do that in the standard library:

import email
msg = email.message_from_string(email_string)
msg['from']  # '[email protected]'
msg['to']    # '[email protected]'

Solution 2

Fortunately Python makes this simpler: http://docs.python.org/2.7/library/email.parser.html#email.parser.Parser

from email.parser import Parser
parser = Parser()

emailText = """PUT THE RAW TEXT OF YOUR EMAIL HERE"""
email = parser.parsestr(emailText)

print email.get('From')
print email.get('To')
print email.get('Subject')

The body is trickier. Call email.is_multipart(). If that's false, you can get your body by calling email.get_payload(). However, if it's true, email.get_payload() will return a list of messages, so you'll have to call get_payload() on each of those.

if email.is_multipart():
    for part in email.get_payload():
        print part.get_payload()
else:
    print email.get_payload()

Solution 3

"Body" is not present in your sample email

Can use email module :

import email
    msg = email.message_from_string(email_message_as_text)

Then use:

print email['To']
print email['From']

... ... etc

Solution 4

You should probably use email.parser

s = """
From [email protected] Thu Jul 25 19:28:59 2013
Received: from a1.local.tld (localhost [127.0.0.1])
    by a1.local.tld (8.14.4/8.14.4) with ESMTP id r6Q2SxeQ003866
    for <[email protected]>; Thu, 25 Jul 2013 19:28:59 -0700
Received: (from root@localhost)
    by a1.local.tld (8.14.4/8.14.4/Submit) id r6Q2Sxbh003865;
    Thu, 25 Jul 2013 19:28:59 -0700
From: [email protected]
Subject: ooooooooooooooooooooooo
To: [email protected]
Cc: 
X-Originating-IP: 192.168.15.127
X-Mailer: Webmin 1.420
Message-Id: <1374805739.3861@a1>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 19:28:59 -0700 (PDT)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="bound1374805739"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--bound1374805739
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

--bound1374805739--
"""

import email.parser

msg = email.parser.Parser().parsestr(s)
help(msg)

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