How to read email using python and smtplib

Question

Found a lot of examples how to send mail, but how can I read inbox? For example yandex.

import smtplib as smtp

email = "[email protected]"
password = "password"

server = smtp.SMTP_SSL('smtp.yandex.com')
server.set_debuglevel(1)
server.ehlo(email)
server.login(email, password)
server.auth_plain()
# server.get_and_print_your_inbox_magic_method()
server.quit()

Asked By: Rasul

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Source

Answer 1

The SMTP protocol is for sending mails. If you want to look at your inbox – aka receive mails – you need to use POP3 or IMAP.

But just like smtplib, Python also has imaplib for IMAP and poplib for POP3.

Answered By: finefoot

Answer 2

As already stated, you need:

SMTP server for sending emails
IMAP for reading emails
POP3 for reading emails

IMAP is more powerful than POP3; in general, you probably want to use IMAP. POP3 deletes the emails after they have been read, unlike IMAP.

For SMTP you can use Python’s smtplib, for IMAP you can use imaplib and for POP3 you can use poplib (all from standard library). However, they are all pretty low-level.

I have created more abstract alternatives to make things easy for everyone:

Red Mail for sending emails (SMTP)
Red Box for reading emails (IMAP)

Here is an example of Red Mail:

from redmail import EmailSender

# Configure sender
email = EmailSender(host="smtp.example.com", port=587)

# Send an email
email.send(
    subject="An example email",
    sender="[email protected]",
    receivers=['[email protected]'],
    text="Hello!",
    html="<h1>Hello!</h1>"
)

And an example of Red Box:

from redbox import EmailBox
from redbox.query import UNSEEN, SUBJECT

# Configure email box    
box = EmailBox(host="imap.example.com", port=993)

# Select email folder
inbox = box['INBOX']

for msg in inbox.search(UNSEEN & SUBJECT("An example email")):
    # Process the message
    print(msg.subject)
    print(msg.from_)

    # Mark the message as read
    msg.read()

You can pip install the libraries:

pip install redmail redbox

Relevant links

Red Box:

Red Mail:

Answered By: miksus

How to read email using python and smtplib

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