simplegmail

A simple Gmail API client in Python for applications.

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Currently Supported Behavior:

• Sending html messages
• Sending messages with attachments
• Sending messages with your Gmail account signature
• Retrieving messages with the full suite of Gmail's search capabilities
• Retrieving messages with attachments, and downloading attachments
• Modifying message labels (includes marking as read/unread, important/not important, starred/unstarred, trash/untrash, inbox/archive)

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
• Installation
• Usage
  • Send a simple message
  • Send a message with attachments, cc, bcc fields
  • Retrieving messages
  • Marking messages
  • Changing message labels
  • Downloading attachments
  • Retrieving messages with queries
  • Retrieving messages with more advanced queries
• Feedback

Getting Started

The only setup required is to download an OAuth 2.0 Client ID file from Google that will authorize your application.

This can be done at: https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials. For those who haven't created a credential for Google's API, after clicking the link above (and logging in to the appropriate account),

1. Select/create the project that this authentication is for (if creating a new project make sure to configure the OAuth consent screen; you only need to set an Application name)

2. Click on the "Dashboard" tab, then "Enable APIs and Services". Search for Gmail and enable.

3. Click on the Credentials tab, then "Create Credentials" > "OAuth client ID".

4. Select what kind of application this is for, and give it a memorable name. Fill out all necessary information for the credential (e.g., if choosing "Web Application" make sure to add an Authorized Redirect URI. See https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2 for more infomation).

5. Back on the credentials screen, click the download icon next to the credential you just created to download it as a JSON object.

6. Save this file as "client_secret.json" and place it in the root directory of your application. (The Gmail class takes in an argument for the name of this file if you choose to name it otherwise.)

The first time you create a new instance of the Gmail class, a browser window will open, and you'll be asked to give permissions to the application. This will save an access token in a file named "gmail-token.json", and only needs to occur once.

You are now good to go!

Note about authentication method: I have opted not to use a username-password authentication (through imap/smtp), since using Google's authorization is both significantly safer and avoids clashing with Google's many security measures.

Installation

Install using pip (Python3).

pip3 install simplegmail

Usage

Send a simple message:

from simplegmail import Gmail

gmail = Gmail() # will open a browser window to ask you to log in and authenticate

params = {
  "to": "[email protected]",
  "sender": "[email protected]",
  "subject": "My first email",
  "msg_html": "<h1>Woah, my first email!</h1><br />This is an HTML email.",
  "msg_plain": "Hi\nThis is a plain text email.",
  "signature": True  # use my account signature
}
message = gmail.send_message(**params)  # equivalent to send_message(to="[email protected]", sender=...)

Send a message with attachments, cc, bcc fields:

from simplegmail import Gmail

gmail = Gmail()

params = {
  "to": "[email protected]",
  "sender": "[email protected]",
  "cc": ["[email protected]"],
  "bcc": ["[email protected]", "[email protected]"],
  "subject": "My first email",
  "msg_html": "<h1>Woah, my first email!</h1><br />This is an HTML email.",
  "msg_plain": "Hi\nThis is a plain text email.",
  "attachments": ["path/to/something/cool.pdf", "path/to/image.jpg", "path/to/script.py"],
  "signature": True  # use my account signature
}
message = gmail.send_message(**params)  # equivalent to send_message(to="[email protected]", sender=...)

It couldn't be easier!

Retrieving messages:

from simplegmail import Gmail

gmail = Gmail()

# Unread messages in your inbox
messages = gmail.get_unread_inbox()

# Starred messages
messages = gmail.get_starred_messages()

# ...and many more easy to use functions can be found in gmail.py!

# Print them out!
for message in messages:
    print("To: " + message.recipient)
    print("From: " + message.sender)
    print("Subject: " + message.subject)
    print("Date: " + message.date)
    print("Preview: " + message.snippet)
    
    print("Message Body: " + message.plain)  # or message.html

Marking messages:

from simplegmail import Gmail

gmail = Gmail()

messages = gmail.get_unread_inbox()

message_to_read = messages[0]
message_to_read.mark_as_read()

# Oops, I want to mark as unread now
message_to_read.mark_as_unread()

message_to_star = messages[1]
message_to_star.star()

message_to_trash = messages[2]
message_to_trash.trash()

# ...and many more functions can be found in message.py!

Changing message labels:

from simplegmail import Gmail

gmail = Gmail()

# Get the label objects for your account. Each label has a specific ID that 
# you need, not just the name!
labels = gmail.list_labels()

# To find a label by the name that you know (just an example):
finance_label = list(filter(lambda x: x.name == 'Finance', labels))[0]

messages = gmail.get_unread_inbox()

# We can add/remove a label
message = messages[0]
message.add_label(finance_label) 

# We can "move" a message from one label to another
message.modify_labels(to_add=labels[10], to_remove=finance_label)

# ...check out the code in message.py for more!

Downloading attachments:

from simplegmail import Gmail

gmail = Gmail()

messages = gmail.get_unread_inbox()

message = messages[0]
if message.attachments:
    for attm in message.attachments:
        print('File: ' + attm.filename)
        attm.save()  # downloads and saves each attachment under it's stored
                     # filename. You can download without saving with `attm.download()`

Retrieving messages (advanced, with queries!):

from simplegmail import Gmail
from simplegmail.query import construct_query

gmail = Gmail()

# Unread messages in inbox with label "Work"
labels = gmail.list_labels()
work_label = list(filter(lambda x: x.name == 'Work', labels))[0]

messages = gmail.get_unread_inbox(labels=[work_label])

# For even more control use queries:
# Messages that are: newer than 2 days old, unread, labeled "Finance" or both "Homework" and "CS"
query_params = {
    "newer_than": (2, "day"),
    "unread": True,
    "labels":[["Work"], ["Homework", "CS"]]
}

messages = gmail.get_messages(query=construct_query(query_params))

# We could have also accomplished this with
# messages = gmail.get_unread_messages(query=construct_query(newer_than=(2, "day"), labels=[["Work"], ["Homework", "CS"]]))
# There are many, many different ways of achieving the same result with search.

Retrieving messages (more advanced, with more queries!):

from simplegmail import Gmail
from simplegmail.query import construct_query

gmail = Gmail()

# For even more control use queries:
# Messages that are either:
#   newer than 2 days old, unread, labeled "Finance" or both "Homework" and "CS"
#     or
#   newer than 1 month old, unread, labeled "Top Secret", but not starred.

labels = gmail.list_labels()

# Construct our two queries separately
query_params_1 = {
    "newer_than": (2, "day"),
    "unread": True,
    "labels":[["Finance"], ["Homework", "CS"]]
}

query_params_2 = {
    "newer_than": (1, "month"),
    "unread": True,
    "labels": ["Top Secret"],
    "exclude_starred": True
}

# construct_query() will create both query strings and "or" them together.
messages = gmail.get_messages(query=construct_query(query_params_1, query_params_2))

For more on what you can do with queries, read the docstring for construct_query() in query.py.

Feedback

If there is functionality you'd like to see added, or any bugs in this project, please let me know by posting an issue or submitting a pull request!