Backup GMAIL Messages with Python

[Simon Forman]

Gregory Piñero wrote:
> I was wondering what methods you experts would reccomend for this task?
>
> Here are the options I have come up with so far:
>
> 1. Build something with the poblib library
> (http://docs.python.org/lib/module-poplib.html)
> --Any pointers on doing this?  How to I get poplib to save messages in
> a standard format I can
> later import into Thunderbird, Outlook, etc?  (mbox?)

I don't do much with email, but there's an example of accessing gmail
via poplib here:
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.python/msg/a12263a870f5f236

And of course there's the 'email' standard library module:
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-email.html

HTH,
~Simon

Out of curiosity, why do you want to _backup_ a gmail account?  (I use
my gmail account to backup files and documents I never want to lose.)
I could think of some reasons, but I'm wondering what yours are. : )