Question

I got payload as a string instance using get_payload() method. But I want my payload in a way where I could access it word by word
I tried several things like as_string() method, flatten() method, get_charset() method , but every time there is some problem.

I got my payload using the following code

import email
from email import *
f=open('mail.txt','r')
obj=email.parser.Parser()
fp=obj.parse(f)
payload=fp.get_payload()

Answer 1

Just tested your snippet with a couple of my own raw emails. Works fine…

get_payload() returns either a list or string, so you need to check that first

if isinstance(payload, list):
    for m in payload:
        print str(m).split()

else:
    print str(m).split()

Edit

Per our discussion, your issue was that you were not checking is_multipart() on the fp object, which actually is a message instance. If fp.is_multipart() == True, then get_payload() will return a list of message instances. In your case, based on your example mail message, it was NOT multipart, and fp was actually the object you were interesting in.