Title: Interactive POP3 Mailbox Inspector
Submitter: Xavier Defrang (other recipes)
Last Updated: 2001/10/17
Version no: 1.0
Category: Network

Description:

This tiny script logs on a POP3 server and allows you to view the top of the messages and eventually mark them for deletion.

Source: Text Source

#!/usr/local/bin/python
#
# This script is a helper to clean POP3 mailboxes
# containing malformed mails that hangs MUA's, that 
# are too large, or whatever...
#
# It iterates over the non-retrieved mails, prints
# selected elements from the headers and prompt the 
# user to delete bogus messages.
#
# Written by Xavier Defrang <xavier.defrang@brutele.be>
# 

# 
import getpass, poplib, re


# Change this to your needs
POPHOST = "pop.domain.com"
POPUSER = "jdoe"
POPPASS = ""

# How many lines of message body to retrieve
MAXLINES = 10

# Headers we're actually interrested in
rx_headers  = re.compile(r"^(From|To|Subject)")

try:

    # Connect to the POPer and identify user
    pop = poplib.POP3(POPHOST)
    pop.user(POPUSER)

    if not POPPASS:
        # If no password was supplied, ask for it
        POPPASS = getpass.getpass("Password for %s@%s:" % (POPUSER, POPHOST))

    # Authenticate user
    pop.pass_(POPPASS)

    # Get some general informations (msg_count, box_size)
    stat = pop.stat()

    # Print some useless information
    print "Logged in as %s@%s" % (POPUSER, POPHOST)
    print "Status: %d message(s), %d bytes" % stat

    bye = 0
    count_del = 0
    for n in range(stat[0]):

        msgnum = n+1

        # Retrieve headers
        response, lines, bytes = pop.top(msgnum, MAXLINES)

        # Print message info and headers we're interrested in
        print "Message %d (%d bytes)" % (msgnum, bytes)
        print "-" * 30
        print "\n".join(filter(rx_headers.match, lines))
        print "-" * 30

        # Input loop
        while 1:
            k = raw_input("(d=delete, s=skip, v=view, q=quit) What?")
            if k in "dD":
                # Mark message for deletion
                k = raw_input("Delete message %d? (y/n)" % msgnum)
                if k in "yY":
                    pop.dele(msgnum)
                    print "Message %d marked for deletion" % msgnum
                    count_del += 1
                break
            elif k in "sS":
                print "Message %d left on server" % msgnum
                break
            elif k in "vV":
                print "-" * 30
                print "\n".join(lines)
                print "-" * 30
            elif k in "qQ":
                bye = 1
                break

        # Time to say goodbye?    
        if bye:
            print "Bye"
            break

    # Summary
    print "Deleting %d message(s) in mailbox %s@%s" % (count_del, POPUSER, POPHOST)

    # Commit operations and disconnect from server
    print "Closing POP3 session"
    pop.quit()

except poplib.error_proto, detail:

    # Fancy error handling
    print "POP3 Protocol Error:", detail

Discussion:

If you're still behind a slow internet link, sometimes you don't want to wait that this funny 10 megabytes mpeg movie (yes, the one you already received twice yesterday) is fully downloaded to read your mail... Instead of telneting your POP server, you may use this small script to inspect your mailbox and do some cleaning...

It uses Python's standard POP3 library (the poplib module) to connect to your mailbox and then it prompts you what to do for any undelivered messages. You may view the top of the message, leave it on the server or mark it for deletion.

No particular tricks or hacks are used in this piece of code, it's a simple example of poplib usage. I just hope it helps...