search mail by date with imaplib

[Jean-Paul Calderone]

On Sat, 06 Jan 2007 11:49:17 -0800, rweth <rweth at cisco.com> wrote:
>csselo at gmail.com wrote:
>> Hi
>> I am looking for a code sample which searches mail by date with imaplib
>>
>> example:
>> get email from 01.01.2007 to now
>>
>> how can I change imaplib search parameters?
>>
>So I had to do the same thing a few years back. I love python but
>seriously every author spends less than 1/10 of 1% on doc !
>
>Well So do I .. so take it with a grain of salt. Here is what I did,
>MANY YEARS AGO .. I don't even have a IMAP account anymore
>
>t,data = M.uid("SEARCH",None,'(FROM blahblah)')
>luid = string.split(data[0])
>for uid in luid:
>   t,d = M.uid("FETCH",uid,"(BODY[HEADER.FIELDS (DATE SUBJECT TO)])")
>   date = d[0][1]
>
>This will get you the dates .. and you can write your own
>filter off that .. it's trivial. What isn't so great is
>getting every piece of mail and then searching for the needle's in
>the haystack.
>
>So I guess this is plan c (just in case you don't get a better answer).
>I will watch this one for a "plan a | b" answer.
>

The SEARCH command supports quite a few kinds of criteria.  Several which
may be relevant here are BEFORE, SINCE, SENTBEFORE, and SENTSINCE.  Using
Twisted's IMAP4 code, you can format a query like this:

    >>> from twisted.mail.imap4 import Query
    >>> Query(after='01-Jan-2007')
    '(AFTER "01-Jan-2007")'
    >>>

Since documentation was brought up, I'll point out Query's docs too, since
that might help shed some further light on what's possible.

http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/current/api/twisted.mail.imap4.html#twisted.mail.imap4.Query

Jean-Paul