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I am trying to use the Python imaplib library in GitPod.

Following the documentation, I imported imaplib and instantiated the IMAP4 object with the following line of code:

M = imaplib.IMAP4()

This returns the following message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/home/gitpod/.pyenv/versions/3.8.12/lib/python3.8/imaplib.py", line 198, in __init__
    self.open(host, port)
  File "/home/gitpod/.pyenv/versions/3.8.12/lib/python3.8/imaplib.py", line 303, in open
    self.sock = self._create_socket()
  File "/home/gitpod/.pyenv/versions/3.8.12/lib/python3.8/imaplib.py", line 293, in _create_socket
    return socket.create_connection((host, self.port))
  File "/home/gitpod/.pyenv/versions/3.8.12/lib/python3.8/socket.py", line 808, in create_connection
    raise err
  File "/home/gitpod/.pyenv/versions/3.8.12/lib/python3.8/socket.py", line 796, in create_connection
    sock.connect(sa)
ConnectionRefusedError: [Errno 111] Connection refused

Is the problem that the imaplib is not able to connect to its own socket, and so I should somehow activate that socket inside GitPod first?

hmltn
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1 Answers1

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From the documentation:

class imaplib.IMAP4(host='', port=IMAP4_PORT, timeout=None)
This class implements the actual IMAP4 protocol. The connection is created and protocol version (IMAP4 or IMAP4rev1) is determined when the instance is initialized. If host is not specified, '' (the local host) is used.

Thus, it tries to connect to the IMAP server on the local machine. Looks like there is none or at least not at port 143.

Steffen Ullrich
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  • Thank you. So the issue is that the GitPod Docker container doesn't have an IMAP server? I thought that I would access my emails from a remote IMAP server (gmail), and that I wouldn't need an IMAP server on my end. Does that mean that this library does not provide the functionality I had in mind (retrieving email)? Or should I just create an IMAP server on my end to communicate with the remote one? Thank you very much – hmltn Oct 16 '21 at 13:38
  • @PeterElbert: The library is for retrieving email. You need some server to retrieve email from. This server need to be given as argument, i.e. something like imap.gmail.com. I have no idea why you think that GitPod would include a mail server and where the mail on this server should come from. – Steffen Ullrich Oct 16 '21 at 13:43
  • Got it, so I pass the server address in the instantiation. The documentation example shows this class being instantiated with no argument so I was following their example. I thought I would pass that information afterwards. I didn't think GitPod contained a mail server. – hmltn Oct 16 '21 at 13:46