Package ProcImap

source code

The ProcImap package provides an API for the IMAP protocol, subclassing from the "mailbox" and "email" packages provided by the Python standard library.

This allows to handle messages stored in an IMAP mailbox in much the same way as e.g. messages stored in an mbox or maildir format (with some limitations). This abstract interface is much nicer than having to work with the standard library's imaplib module, which is only a very thin wrapper around the IMAP protocol itself.

In addition, ProcImap contains a number of "utility" functions and classes, targeted for automatic processing/filtering of email messages, interactive work on an an IMAP server from inside ipython, and writing consistent command line tools operating on IMAP mailboxes.

The original intent of the ProcImap package was to provide a framework inspired by the traditional procmail (http://www.procmail.org) tool, allowing to filter and organize incoming email messages (hence the name). However, in the course of development the focus has shifted to creating an abstract API for working with IMAP messages, while processing incoming mail has become of secondary interest.

Nonetheless, you can easily use ProcImap to assist in writing simple scripts that process incoming mails on your standard IMAP server. You should be advised however that many of the techniques that work fine on a standard IMAP mailbox do not work so well when trying to apply them to a Gmail account. While technically Gmail fulfills all specifications of the IMAP protocol, the philosophy behind the system is rather incompatible (look for my "Accessing Gmail through Python" blog post at michaelgoerz.net). Since Gmail is my primary email provider, this explains the shift of focus in the direction of development.

I use ProcImap as the basis for a new-mail-notification-tool, as well as to perform backups of my Gmail account (see http://github.com/goerz/gmailbkp). I've also used ProcImap to assist in migrating large amounts of messages between accounts, and to debug IMAP servers interactively in an ipython console.