Version 0.1 29.06.2009

Goal

I needed a script who will run into background, and check at some interval my gmail account for new messages. No need to download the messages, just list the statistics about them.

The Script

The script imports the gmail class and grabs (one time only) the user password. This will prevent to store the password somewhere in the file. You can modify the checking interval (default: 60 sec).

#!/usr/bin/python
#
 
import gmail
import getpass as gs
import time
 
account = 'example_account@gmail.com'
interval = 60 # in seconds
 
pwd = gs.getpass('Password for %s :> ' % account)
 
while(True):
    a = gmail.Gmail(account, pwd)
    a.get_messages_list()
    time.sleep(interval)

Gmail class

Gmail class is using poplib to grab the messages list from any gmail account.
The result looks like this:

$ python gmail_checker.py
Password for example_account@gmail.com :>
You have 2 new message(s) with size: 5531
 
 
Grabbing messages at 19:21:50:
 
 
Msg#1 From: Cristian NAVALICI <example_account@gmail.com>
 Subject: [Fwd: OS Reports]
Msg#2 From: John ISO <example_account@gmail.com>
 Subject: Greetings from Romania

Download the module from here. Unzip and put it in the same dir as the script above.