Hacking Gmail

158 Part II — Getting Inside Gmail

By this point in the script, you have logged in. Now to retrieve the messages in

the Inbox:

my $messages =

$gmail->get_messages( label =>

$Mail::Webmail::Gmail::FOLDERS{‘INBOX’} );

This places the contents of the Inbox into $messagesas a reference to an array of

hashes, which contains the messages within the Inbox. Before looping through

this array and creating an RSS item from each one, first you need to create the

object that creates the RSS feed. Do that with this line:

my $rss = new XML::RSS( version => ‘2.0’ );

Now for the real workings. You have an array where each member is a hash, con-

taining a single message and all its details. To get to these details, you need to be

able to address them with the hash’s key. So, loop through the array, take the name

of the hash, use that as its key, and grab out the values:

foreach ( @{$messages} ) {

my $message = $gmail->get_indv_email( msg => $_ );

my $messageid = $_->{‘id’};

my $sender_email = $message->{ $_->{‘id’} }-

>{‘sender_email’}

|| “Sender_email irretrievable”;

my $sent = $message->{ $_->{‘id’} }->{‘sent’}

|| “To irretrievable”;

my $subject = $message->{ $_->{‘id’} }->{‘subject’}

|| “Subject irretrievable”;

my $body = $message->{ $_->{‘id’} }->{‘body’}

|| “Body irretrievable”;

Noting, again, the double pipe in the statement that gives the variable a value even if

the Mail::Webmail::Gmail module cannot. This protects you a little from Gmail’s

evolution breaking the module and hence your scripts.

Next, create the RSS item for the message:

$rss->add_item(

title => “$subject”,

link =>

“http://gmail.google.com/gmail/h/abcde12345/?th=$messageid&v=c

”,