pop3

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In this tutorial you will learn how to receive email using the poplib module. The mail server needs to support pop3, but most mail servers do this. The Post Office Protocol (POP3) is for receiving mail only, for sending you will need the SMTP protocol.

Simplified Mail Server

Meta Data

Every email will contain many variables, but these are the most important ones:

Reading Email Example

You can request messages directly from a mail server using the Post Office Protocol (protocol). You do not have to worry about the internal protocol because you can use the poplib module.
Connect and authenticate with the server using:

Feature	Description
message-id	unique identifier
from	where did the email come from?
to	where was the email sent to?
date	date
subject	Email subject.


# connect to server
server = poplib.POP3(SERVER)

# login
server.user(USER)
server.pass_(PASSWORD)

The program below gets 10 emails from the server including mail header


import poplib
import string, random
import StringIO, rfc822

def readMail():
    SERVER = "YOUR MAIL SERVER"
    USER = "YOUR USERNAME [email protected]"
    PASSWORD = "YOUR PASSWORD"
    
    # connect to server
    server = poplib.POP3(SERVER)
    
    # login
    server.user(USER)
    server.pass_(PASSWORD)
    
    # list items on server
    resp, items, octets = server.list()
    
    for i in range(0,10):
        id, size = string.split(items[i])
        resp, text, octets = server.retr(id)
    
        text = string.join(text, "\n")
        file = StringIO.StringIO(text)
        
        message = rfc822.Message(file)
        
        for k, v in message.items():
            print k, "=", v

readMail()

Related course:
Python Programming Bootcamp: Go from zero to hero

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Posted in network

2015-02-04

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