Receive replies from Gmail with smtplib - Python

Question

Ok, I am working on a type of system so that I can start operations on my computer with sms messages. I can get it to send the initial message:

import smtplib  

fromAdd = 'GmailFrom'  
toAdd  = 'SMSTo'  
msg = 'Options \nH - Help \nT - Terminal'  

username = 'GMail'  
password = 'Pass'  

server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com:587')  
server.starttls()  
server.login(username , password)  
server.sendmail(fromAdd , toAdd , msg)  
server.quit()

I just need to know how to wait for the reply or pull the reply from Gmail itself, then store it in a variable for later functions.

Answer 1

Instead of SMTP which is used for sending emails, you should use either POP3 or IMAP (the latter is preferable). Example of using SMTP (the code is not mine, see the url below for more info):

import imaplib
mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
mail.login('[email protected]', 'mypassword')
mail.list()
# Out: list of "folders" aka labels in gmail.
mail.select("inbox") # connect to inbox.

result, data = mail.search(None, "ALL")

ids = data[0] # data is a list.
id_list = ids.split() # ids is a space separated string
latest_email_id = id_list[-1] # get the latest

result, data = mail.fetch(latest_email_id, "(RFC822)") # fetch the email body (RFC822) for the given ID

raw_email = data[0][1] # here's the body, which is raw text of the whole email
# including headers and alternate payloads

Shamelessly stolen from here

Answer 2

Uku's answer looks reasonable. However, as a pragmatist, I'm going to answer a question you didn't ask, and suggest a nicer IMAP and SMTP library.

I haven't used these myself in anything other then side projects so you'll need to do your own evaluation, but both are much nicer to use.

IMAP https://github.com/martinrusev/imbox

SMTP: http://tomekwojcik.github.io/envelopes/

Answer 3

I can suggest you to use this new lib https://github.com/charlierguo/gmail

A Pythonic interface to Google's GMail, with all the tools you'll need. Search, read and send multipart emails, archive, mark as read/unread, delete emails, and manage labels.

Usage

from gmail import Gmail

g = Gmail()
g.login(username, password)

#get all emails
mails = g.inbox().mail() 
# or if you just want your unread mails
mails = g.inbox().mail(unread=True, from="[email protected]")

g.logout()