Python IMAP 从或到指定的电子邮件地址搜索

Question

I am using this with Gmail's SMTP server, and I would like to search via IMAP for emails either sent to or received from an address.

This is what I have:

mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')

mail.login('user', 'pass')
mail.list()
mail.select("[Gmail]/All Mail")

status, email_ids = mail.search(None, 'TO "tech163@fusionswift.com" OR FROM "tech163@fusionswift.com"')

The last line of the error is: imaplib.error: SEARCH command error: BAD ['Could not parse command']

Not sure how I'm supposed to do that kind of OR statement within python's imaplib . If someone can quickly explain what's wrong or point me in the right direction, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

The error you are receiving is generated from the server because it can't parse the search query correctly. In order to generate a valid query follow the RFC 3501 , in page 49 it is explained in detail the structure.

For example your search string to be correct should be:

'(OR (TO "tech163@fusionswift.com") (FROM "tech163@fusionswift.com"))'

Answer 2

Try to use IMAP query builder from https://github.com/ikvk/imap_tools

from imap_tools import A, AND, OR, NOT
# AND
A(text='hello', new=True)  # '(TEXT "hello" NEW)'
# OR
OR(text='hello', date=datetime.date(2000, 3, 15))  # '(OR TEXT "hello" ON 15-Mar-2000)'
# NOT
NOT(text='hello', new=True)  # 'NOT (TEXT "hello" NEW)'
# complex
A(OR(from_='from@ya.ru', text='"the text"'), NOT(OR(A(answered=False), A(new=True))), to='to@ya.ru')

Of course you can use all library tools