Question

Using IMAPClient how do I view the message body and the senders email address?

server = IMAPClient(imap_server, use_uid=True, ssl=ssl)
server.login(imap_user, imap_password)

print 'login successful'

select_info = server.select_folder('INBOX')
print '%d messages in INBOX' % select_info['EXISTS']

messages = server.search(['NOT DELETED'])
print "%d messages that aren't deleted" % len(messages)

print
print "Messages:"
response = server.fetch(messages, ['FLAGS', 'RFC822.SIZE'])
for msgid, data in response.iteritems():
    print '   ID %d: %d bytes, flags=%s' % (msgid,
                                            data['RFC822.SIZE'],
                                            data['FLAGS'])

Answer 1

Although IMAPClient is a lot easier than using imaplib, it’s still useful to know about the IMAP protocol

(Note, I’ve picked an arbitrary single email id to work with)

You can get the FROM via:

server.fetch([456], ['BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (FROM)]'])
# {456: {'BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (FROM)]': 'From: Facebook <[e-mail]>\r\n\r\n', 'SEQ': 456}}

And the BODY via:

server.fetch([456], ['BODY[TEXT]'])
# {456: {'BODY[TEXT]': "Hey Jon,\r\n\r\nYou recently entered a new contact email [snip]", 'SEQ': 456}}

However, what’s generally easier is to do:

import email
m = server.fetch([456], ['RFC822'])
msg = email.message_from_string(m[456]['RFC822'])
print msg['from']
# Facebook <[e-mail]>
from email.utils import parseaddr
print parseaddr(msg['from'])
# ('Facebook', '[e-mail]')
print msg.get_payload()
# content of email...

Just be wary of where the payload includes attachments or is multipart…