POP Mail Reader Script
On to reading email in Python: the script in Example 13-18 employs Python’s standard
poplib module, an implementation of the client-side interface to POP—the Post Office
Protocol. POP is a well-defined and widely available way to fetch email from servers
over sockets. This script connects to a POP server to implement a simple yet portable
email download and display tool.
Example 13-18. PP4E\Internet\Email\popmail.py
#!/usr/local/bin/python
"""
##############################################################################
use the Python POP3 mail interface module to view your POP email account
messages; this is just a simple listing--see pymail.py for a client with
more user interaction features, and smtpmail.py for a script which sends
mail; POP is used to retrieve mail, and runs on a socket using port number
110 on the server machine, but Python's poplib hides all protocol details;
to send mail, use the smtplib module (or os.popen('mail...')). see also:
imaplib module for IMAP alternative, PyMailGUI/PyMailCGI for more features;
##############################################################################
"""
import poplib, getpass, sys, mailconfig
mailserver = mailconfig.popservername # ex: 'pop.rmi.net'
mailuser = mailconfig.popusername # ex: 'lutz'
mailpasswd = getpass.getpass('Password for %s?' % mailserver)
print('Connecting...')
server = poplib.POP3(mailserver)
server.user(mailuser) # connect, log in to mail server
server.pass_(mailpasswd) # pass is a reserved word
try:
print(server.getwelcome()) # print returned greeting message
msgCount, msgBytes = server.stat()
print('There are', msgCount, 'mail messages in', msgBytes, 'bytes')
print(server.list())
print('-' * 80)
input('[Press Enter key]')
for i in range(msgCount):
hdr, message, octets = server.retr(i+1) # octets is byte count
for line in message: print(line.decode()) # retrieve, print all mail
print('-' * 80) # mail text is bytes in 3.x
if i < msgCount - 1:
input('[Press Enter key]') # mail box locked till quit
finally: # make sure we unlock mbox
server.quit() # else locked till timeout
print('Bye.')
POP: Fetching Email | 905