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1 Introducing weighmail
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2 #####################
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3
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4 :date: 2012-05-24 19:30
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5 :tags: Python, Gmail, IMAPClient, weighmail
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6 :slug: introducing-weighmail
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7 :author: Brian Neal
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8
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9 Recently my wife approached me and told me that Gmail was warning her that she
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10 was using 95% of her (free) quota. This was a bit surprising, but my wife does a
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11 lot of photography, and sends lots of photos through the mail to various people.
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12 So I began helping her trying to find her large messages. It was then that I
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13 learned that Gmail provides no easy way to do this. You can't sort by size. You
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14 can search for specific attachments, for example .psd or .jpg, and that is what
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15 she ended up doing.
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16
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17 Surely I thought there must be an easier way. I thought that perhaps Gmail might
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18 have an API like their other products. A bit of searching turned up that the
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19 only API to Gmail is IMAP_. I didn't know anything about IMAP, but I do know
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20 some Python. And sure enough, Python has a library for IMAP called imaplib_.
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21 Glancing through imaplib I got the impression it was a very low-level library
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22 and I began to get a bit discouraged.
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23
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24 I continued doing some searching and I quickly found IMAPClient_, a high-level
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25 and friendlier library for working with IMAP. This looked like it could work
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26 very well for me!
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27
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28 I started thinking about writing an application to find big messages in a Gmail
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29 account. The most obvious and natural way to flag large messages would be to
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30 slap a Gmail label on them. But could IMAPClient do this? It didn't look like
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31 it. It turns out that labels are part of a set of `custom Gmail IMAP
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32 extensions`_, and IMAPClient didn't support them. Yet.
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33
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34 I contacted the author of IMAPClient, `Menno Smits`_, and quickly learned he is
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35 a very friendly and encouraging guy. I decided to volunteer a patch, as this
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36 would give me a chance to learn something about IMAP. He readily agreed and I
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37 dove in.
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38
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39 The short version of the story is I learned a heck of a lot from reading the
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40 source to IMAPClient, and was able to contribute a patch for Gmail label support
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41 and even some tests!
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42
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43 After the patch was accepted I went to work on my application, which I have
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44 dubbed weighmail_. I was even able to figure out how to put `weighmail up on
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45 PyPI`_ thanks to Menno's example.
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46
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47 So if you need a program to categorize your Gmail by message size, I hope
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48 weighmail will meet your needs. Please try it out and feel free to send me
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49 feedback and feature requests on the Bitbucket issue tracker.
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50
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51 I have used it maybe a half-dozen times on my Gmail account now. My Gmail
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52 account is only about 26% full and I have about 26,300 messages in my "All Mail"
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53 folder. Run times for weighmail have varied from six to 15 minutes when adding 3
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54 label categories for size. I was (and am) kind of worried that Gmail may lock me
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55 out of my account for accessing it too heavily, but knock on wood it hasn't yet.
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56 Perhaps they rate limit the responses and that is why the run times vary so
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57 much.
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58
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59 In any event, I hope you find it useful. A big thank you to Menno Smits for his
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60 IMAPClient library, his advice, and working with me on the patch. Hooray for
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61 open source!
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62
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63 .. _IMAP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol
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64 .. _imaplib: http://docs.python.org/library/imaplib.html
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65 .. _IMAPClient: http://imapclient.freshfoo.com/
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66 .. _custom Gmail IMAP extensions: https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/imap_extensions
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67 .. _weighmail: https://bitbucket.org/bgneal/weighmail/
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68 .. _weighmail up on PyPI: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/weighmail/0.1.0
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69 .. _Menno Smits: http://freshfoo.com/blog/
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