downloading web based email

[jens persson]

Preston Landers wrote:

>  Hello everyone....
>
> I'm thinking of writing a Python program to download email from
> web-based services such as Yahoo mail, Deja, Hotmail, and so on, and
> deliever the mail in a format that standard unix mailers can use.
>
> I'm posting here to make sure that this work has not already been done.
> If someone has already seen a program like this, that can be adapted for
> a variety of web based email services, please let me know.  I'm not
> writing this as a learning exercise,  I just need the tool. ;-)
>
> My idea was to have a nice two-level effect with a path running down the
> middle... no wait, I meant, a two-level effect with the higher level
> handling the actual delievery of the mail and a variety of modules to
> handle the quirks of each particular mail service.
>
> If I get something coded up, I'll be sure to post here about it.  Just
> wondering if somebody's already attempted this.
>
> thanks,
>
> ---Preston
>

Well, on freashmeat i found hotmole[1]:

Hotmole logs in to Hotmail and retrieves unread email from a given user's
account and forwards it to the local mail spool of the user who is running
the script. It will optionally delete email from Hotmail after forwarding
it. Hotmole requires no user interaction. It can be tweaked easily to cope
with changes in the HTML code generated by Hotmail.

I couldent get to the homepage but YMMV

(It seems to be based on lynx and awk so it will be a learning exercise :-)

/jp


[1]http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1999/03/10/921097908.html