Question

I am trying to modify emails stored as text files. I first import a message like this :

import email
f = open('filename')
msg = email.message_from_file(f)

Then, I make all the modifications I want, using the features of the email module.

The last step is to save the Message object (msg) in a file. What is the piece of code that does this ? There seems not to be any simple function like “message_to_file()”…

Many thanks.

Answer 1

The Messsage.as_string method should give you a flattened version of the message that you can write out just as you would any other string:

msg.as_string()

If this doesn’t provide exactly the format you want, consider trying the email.generator module? If I read things correctly, you should be able to do something like this:

generator = email.generator.Generator(out_file)
generator.flatten(msg)

Assuming out_file is an open and writable file and msg is your message.