Hacking Gmail

Checking for Mail

N

ow that you’ve been introduced to the Gmail libraries, you

can them to use with a simple script to tell you when you

have new mail. In this chapter, you go through the first

stage of this code in all of the languages and then build on it in

Perl to make a standalone application.

As previously discussed, the APIs upon which this code

is based may cease to work every so often, as Google

changes the way that Gmail operates. If that’s the case,

your knowledge gained in Chapter 5 should help you

help the API’s author to fix things.

The Basics in PHP

Using the Mail::Webmail::Gmail module to check for mail is

simplicity itself. You need to set up the modules and then log in:

use Mail::Webmail::Gmail;

my $gmail = Mail::Webmail::Gmail->new(

username => “ben.hammersley\@gmail.com”,

password => “XXXXXXXX”,

);

After that, retrieve the Inbox and step through the list of mes-

sages in it. Within the Perl library, using the get_messages

method gives you an array of hashes, with the value of ‘new’

being the read/unread flag. So all you need to do is count the

number of messages with a true value in that reference, like so:

̨Checking for new

Reading Mail with Perl.

And Now

̨Instant Messenger

alerts

̨Alerts to your

mobile phone

chapter

in this chapter