Run python script at reception of email

Question

I own a shared hosting which can run anacrontab. I would like to run a python script when I receive an email on that server. Is anacrontab enough? Or would using a client such as Gmail be better?

Answer 1

import imapclient, pyzmail, html2text

def latestMail():
    imapObj = imapclient.IMAPClient('imap.yourServer.com', ssl=False)
    imapObj.login('imapUser', 'imapPass')
    imapObj.select_folder('Inbox', readonly=False)
    UIDs = imapObj.search(criteria='ALL', charset=None)
    rawMessages = imapObj.fetch(UIDs[0], ['BODY[]', 'FLAGS'])
    message = pyzmail.PyzMessage.factory(rawMessages[UIDs[0]]['BODY[]'])
    return message

def parser(message):
    if message.text_part is not None and message.html_part is not None:
        multipart = True
    else:
        multipart = False

    if message.text_part is not None:
        try:
            body = message.text_part.get_payload().decode(message.text_part.charset)
        except TypeError:
            body = message.text_part.get_payload()

    if message.html_part is not None and multipart is False:
        try:
            body = html2text.html2text(message.html_part.get_payload().decode(message.html_part.charset))
        except Exception:
            raise Systemexit
    return body


try:
    message = latestMail()
    clean = parser(message)
    print clean
except IndexError:
    print "No messages left"
    raise os._exit(0)
except Exception as e:
    print e

Crontab config:

HOME=/var/www/html/whatever
* * * * * root /var/www/html/whatever/myMailChecker.py

Conclusion:

This will call your imap servers' Inbox every minute and parse trough your mail and parse it's content, you can do whatever you want after like create a new entry in your mysql table with the mail content etc.. or run another script if clean is not None etc.