use imaplib and oauth for connection with Gmail

Question

I want to use Oauth to connect to Gmail in Python. Right now I've got the xoauth.py script from Google (link), and generating a token works all fine, but how can I then use that in another script? It's going to be in Django.

Right now my script logs in like this:

m = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL("imap.gmail.com")
m.login("[email protected]", "password")

But I want something more secure.

Answer 1

Here's an example using the oauth2 module to authenticate using oauth, taken from the readme:

import oauth2 as oauth
import oauth2.clients.imap as imaplib

# Set up your Consumer and Token as per usual. Just like any other
# three-legged OAuth request.
consumer = oauth.Consumer('your_consumer_key', 'your_consumer_secret')
token = oauth.Token('your_users_3_legged_token', 
    'your_users_3_legged_token_secret')

# Setup the URL according to Google's XOAUTH implementation. Be sure
# to replace the email here with the appropriate email address that
# you wish to access.
url = "https://mail.google.com/mail/b/[email protected]/imap/"

conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.googlemail.com')
conn.debug = 4 

# This is the only thing in the API for impaplib.IMAP4_SSL that has 
# changed. You now authenticate with the URL, consumer, and token.
conn.authenticate(url, consumer, token)

# Once authenticated everything from the impalib.IMAP4_SSL class will 
# work as per usual without any modification to your code.
conn.select('INBOX')
print conn.list()

Quite a bit cleaner than using xoauth.