Gmail

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SHOW HN2013

Gmail

Python library to read and manage your Gmail

github.com

#python#gmail#imap#email api

158points
29comments
#104of 1,739 in 2013
Top 6%of 2013 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

8 positive, 4 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 2 critical, out of 17 comments about the project. Thread score +0.34.

Idea: 6 for, 0 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 2 againstExecution: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Useful and fills a gap; nothing similar existed

    From 3 comments
    • Thank you, this is really useful. Just when I needed it and wanted to write one you posted it. I don't think I would have done half the good job you did.
      ibudiallo on HN
    • Very cool - I am sure a lot of people will get good use out of it. Rather surprised nothing like this already existed.
      AnSavvides on HN
    • thank you for this. I was looking for something like this for a project I was working on
      maskedinvader on HN
  • Good starting point for building Gmail clients or scripts

    From 3 comments
    • Thank you for sharing this. I've been very interested in building my own Gmail client the past few weeks, and this looks like a nice starting point.
      arms on HN
    • This is great. Thank you for sharing. I've been planning to create a Python script to help me automatically label my older emails based on content. This is a big help.
      hatchoo on HN
    • Guess I can potentially use this as a module in a tornado/Django web application for scheduling email, without having the user to sign in to gmail explicitly or opening up a…
      deepGem on HN

Objections

  • Supports username/password login instead of only OAuth

    From 1 comment
    • I really wish the username/password option wasn't supported. What use cases aren't possible with OAuth?
      duvander on HN
  • Works only with a Google service, not general email

    From 2 comments
    • This looks pretty nice. It's really too bad that it works with a Google service.
      kudu on HN
    • Right, who still wants to share their data with Google?
      mkesper on HN

Requests

  • Explain how to get attachment files

    From 1 comment
    • how to get the attachment files ? i didn't see anyhting in the doc about it ... Are they in the body ?
      bussiere on HN
  • Support for forwarding sent emails with large attachments

    From 1 comment
    • This is really cool. The only thing I use gmail web interface for since I moved to mutt and IMAP, is forwarding already sent emails with large attachments to new addresses. They…
      eliasmacpherson on HN

Questions

  • Is there a similar good library for Google Calendar?

    From 1 comment
    • Slightly off topic, but does anyone know of a similar library for Google Calendar that's any good?
      superchink on HN
  • Is it safe to store passwords, e.g. via system keyring or OAuth

    From 2 comments
    • You can also retrieve the password from your system keyring[1] ``` import keyring pass_is = keyring.get_password('gmail', 'whatever@gmail.com') ``` you set it with ```…
      spindritf on HN
    • Even better, use oauth2 tokens instead of your username/password. Here's a script to generate them: https://google-mail-oauth2-tools.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/python/oauth2.py
      grinich on HN

Alternatives named

  • IMAPClient

    From 1 comment
    • Cool! If you're looking for non-gmail-specific email lib thingerator, check out IMAPClient (it's better than imaplib I swear!): http://imapclient.readthedocs.org/en/latest/
      kbar13 on HN
  • Imbox

    From 1 comment
    • There is also Imbox https://github.com/martinrusev/imbox, which is a Python library for reading all kinds of IMAP mailboxes, not just Gmail
      ajaxaddicted on HN
  • Google Apps Script

    From 1 comment
    • This is great. For the record, if you just need to do some simple scripting of your Gmail, maybe on cron, Google Apps Script is great for that.…
      mcrittenden on HN
  • Ruby gmail gem (nu7hatch/gmail)

    From 2 comments
    • Didn't know the Ruby one existed, thanks for that!
      knes on HN
    • I am using the Gmail gem (https://github.com/nu7hatch/gmail) in couple of my rails projects and it works perfect. Every single mail is delivered.
      tejasbubane on HN
  • Google APIs Client Library for Python

    From 1 comment
    • There is the official Google APIs Client Library for Python (https://developers.google.com/google-apps/calendar/downloads). You can even test the RESTful API online using the…
      astrada on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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