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I am using poplib in Python 3.3 to fetch emails from a gmail account and everything is working well, except that the mails are not marked as read after retrieving them with the retr() method, despite the fact that the documentation says "Retrieve whole message number which, and set its seen flag."

Here is the code:

pop = poplib.POP3_SSL("pop.gmail.com", "995")
pop.user("recent:mymail@gmail.com")
pop.pass_("mypassword")
numMessages = len(pop.list()[1])
for i in range(numMessages):
    for j in pop.retr(i+1)[1]:
        print(j)
pop.quit()

Am I doing something wrong or does the documentation lie? (or, did I just misinterpret it?)

msw
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Federico Pirani
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1 Answers1

6

The POP protocol has no concept of "read" or "unread" messages; the LIST command simply shows all existing messages. You may want to use another protocol, like IMAP, if the server supports it.

You could delete messages after successful retrieval, using the DELE command. Only after a successful QUIT command will the server actually delete them.

dasm
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    I was afraid you were going to say to use IMAP, just wanted to believe what I read from the documentation. I guess "seen" means seen from python... Thank you! – Federico Pirani Jul 23 '13 at 10:14