Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is one of the most commonly used protocols for reading messages from an email server. In order to access the mailbox from your client applications, you would first need to establish a connection with the IMAP server. To achieve this, this article covers how to connect to an IMAP server using Python. Furthermore, you will learn how to fetch messages from an IMAP server programmatically.
Python Library to Connect IMAP Server
Aspose.Email for Python is a feature-rich library to create email client applications using Python. Using the library, you can easily access IMAP servers and work with messages. You can install the library from PyPI using the following command.
> pip install Aspose.Email-for-Python-via-NET
Connect to an IMAP Server in Python
Before connecting to an IMAP server, you need to have the following things known.
- Host
- Username
- Password
- Port
Once you have them, you can configure the IMAP client using the following steps.
- Create an object of ImapClient class and initialize it with host, username, password, and port number.
- Set security options using ImapClient.security_options property.
- Once done, you can work with the IMAP server using the ImapClient object.
The following code sample shows how to establish a connection with an IMAP server in Python.
Fetch Email Messages from IMAP Server in Python
After establishing the connection, you can proceed to fetch the emails from IMAP server in Python. The following are the steps to perform this operation.
- Create an object of ImapClient class and configure it.
- Select the desired message folder using the select_folder() method.
- Loop through the list of messages you get using the list_messages() method.
- Save message to disk using save_message() method, if required.
The following code sample shows how to read messages from an IMAP server in Python.
Get a Free API License
You can try and use Aspose.Email for Python for free by getting a temporary license.
Conclusion
In this article, you have learned how to connect to an IMAP server in Python. Furthermore, you have seen how to fetch messages from an IMAP server and save them on disk programmatically in Python. Besides, you can explore other features of Aspose.Email using documentation. Also, you can post your questions or queries to our forum.