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--- ubuntu:curl:perform_imap_queries_using_curl [2020/07/15 09:30] – external edit 127.0.0.1
+++ ubuntu:curl:perform_imap_queries_using_curl [2020/09/25 12:58] (current) – removed 192.168.1.1
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-====== Ubuntu - Curl - Perform imap queries using Curl ======
-If you have an IMAP or IMAPS server you can "read your email" using Curl.  To get started you'll first of all need to know:
-  * Your mail-server address.
-  * Your mail login.
-  * Your mail password.
-----
-===== Listing Folders =====
-The initial example will connect us to the IMAP server at imap.example.com, using username bobby and password tables:
-<code bash>
-curl --url "imap://mail.example.com/" --user "bobby:tables"
-</code>
-<WRAP info>
-If you leave out the password from the --user argument, curl will prompt you for the password before it preforms the request. This way you're not leaking your password to your shell history or the process list.
-Curl also supports .netrc lookup of user:password with -n, if the --user argument is left off.
-</WRAP>
-returns
-<code bash>
-..
-..
-* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" xen-users
-* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" mentors-debian-org
-* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" fairshare
-* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "/" INBOX
-</code>
-Here we see that we've connected, and received a list of folders, including "xen-users", "fairshare", and the "INBOX".
-If your mail-server is running over SSL then instead of using **imap://** you should set the schema to **imaps://**, it may be that you're using a self-signed certificate in that case you'd add **--insecure** to avoid checking the certificate trust-chain.
-This would look like so:
-<code bash>
-curl --insecure  --url "imaps://mail.example.com/" --user "bobby:tables"
-</code>
-----
-===== Discovering Messages =====
-With the previous example we looked at listing mailboxes.  What if we wanted to actually view a message?  To fetch a message we need the identifier of the message to fetch - so we need to find out how many messages exist, as message-IDs are sequential.
-To see how many messages exist in the folder "People-Steve" we'd run this:
-<code bash>
-curl --insecure \
-    --url "imaps://mail.example.com/" \
-    --user "bobby:tables" \
-    --request "EXAMINE People-Steve"
-</code>
-returns:
-<code bash>
-* OK [PERMANENTFLAGS ()] Read-only mailbox.
-* 9465 EXISTS
-* 3266 RECENT
-* OK [UIDVALIDITY 1373146046] UIDs valid
-* OK [UIDNEXT 9468] Predicted next UID
-</code>
-This tells us that there are 9465 messages.  So we can probably assume that fetching a message with each of these IDs will work: 1, 2, 3, ... 9465, & 9465.
-----
-===== Fetching A Single Message =====
-Fetching a message is simple if you know both the folder from which it comes and the ID of the message you wish to retrieve.
-We've already shown that the folder "People-Steve" contains nearly ten-thousand messages, so this next example will show us fetching the message with ID 512:
-<code bash>
-curl --insecure \
-    --url "imaps://mail.example.com/People-Steve;UID=512" \
-    --user "bobby:tables"
-</code>
-returns:
-<code bash>
-..
-X-HELO: mail.cs.helsinki.fi
-X-REMOTE-IP: 128.214.9.1
-X-REMOTE-HOST: courier.cs.helsinki.fi
-..
-..
-I just accidentally someone! (see facebook)
-..
-</code>
-Fetching the message includes both the headers and the body.  If you want to fetch just the headers, or a subset, things are a little fiddlier due to URL-encoding.  This example gets the headers "to", "from", "date", and "subject":
-<code bash>
-curl --insecure \
-    --url "imaps://mail.example.com/People-Steve;UID=512;SECTION=HEADER.FIELDS%20(DATE%20FROM%20TO%20SUBJECT)" \
-    --user "bobby:tables"
-</code>
-returns:
-<code bash>
-Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:13:41 +0300 (EEST)
-From: Steve Kemp <steve@steve.org.uk>
-To: Steve Kemp <steve@steve.org.uk>
-Subject: Re: Fancy a cake?
-</code>
-We could have avoided the use of URL-encoding and instead sent a custom-request, like so:
-<code bash>
-curl --insecure --verbose \
-    --url "imaps://imap.example.com/People-Steve" \
-    --user "bobby:tables" \
-    --request "fetch 512 BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (Subject)]"
-</code>
-returns:
-<code bash>
-..
-Subject: Re: Fancy a cake?
-..
-</code>
-The reason for avoiding custom-requests where possible is that when you're using the curl API programatically you'll discover that responses are not decoded - which is a known issue.
-In the example above we'd have received zero output unless/until we added the **--verbose** flag.  Precisely because curl has received the output from the IMAP-server but not decoded it and presented it to us.
-----
-===== Simple Shell Scripts =====
-As a quick hack the following shell-script will dump the subject of the first ten messages in the given mailbox:
-<code bash>
-#!/bin/sh
-# Dump the subject of the first ten messages in the folder.
-for id in `seq 1 10` ; do
-    echo "Message ${id}"
-    curl --insecure \
-        --url "imaps://mail.example.com/People-Steve;UID=${id};SECTION=HEADER.FIELDS%20(SUBJECT)" \
-        --user "bobby:tables"
-done
-</code>
-This takes no account of the maximum message-ID.  You could just keep going indefinitely, to dump all subjects and stop on error:
-<code bash>
-#!/bin/sh
-# Dump the subject of all messages in the folder.
-id=1
-while true  ; do
-    echo "Message ${id}"
-    curl --insecure \
-        --url "imaps://mail.example.com/People-Steve;UID=${id};SECTION=HEADER.FIELDS%20(SUBJECT)" \
-        --user "bobby:tables" || exit
-    id=`expr $id + 1`
-done
-</code>
-----
-===== CurlMail Script =====
-<code bash>
-#!/bin/bash
-#                       /usr/local/bin/curlmail
-#  http://crystalfaeries.net/posix/bin/curlmail
-# celeste crystalfaery 2016-02-24 22:27:10+00:00
-# https://debian-administration.org/article/726/Performing_IMAP_queries_via_curl
-# read(only) IMAPS INBOX  (using ~/.netrc for password)
-# (machine example.org login user password my_password)
-# 1st argument is machine name (else talk to self if not specified)
-# 2..n argument(s) (optional) are message number(s) to view
-# e.g.: curlmail example.org 3 1 4
-help=10 # this line number of file -1
-# NOTE: remove the "--insecure" argument to curl if server(s) have real certificate vs self-signed certificate
-# NOTE: we do not sanitize the server argument, so as-is don't make this into a cgi
-function cleanup {
-  if [ -e /tmp/$$ ]; then
-    rm	/tmp/$$		# cleanup our temporary file
-  fi
-}
-trap cleanup INT TERM			# cleanup our temporary file
-case $# in
-)
-  exec	$0 `hostname`		# talk to myself
-  exit	-1			# exec doesn't return, right?
-  ;;
-)
-  case "$1" in
-    -v)
-	tail -n +4 $0 | head -n 1
-	;;
-    --version)
-	tail -n +4 $0 | head -n 1
-	;;
-    -h)
-	head -n $help $0 | tail -n +6
-	;;
-    --help)
-	head -n $help $0 | tail -n +6
-	;;
-    *)
-	let uid=0
-	while let uid=$uid+1
-	do	# iterate available messages
-	  echo -n "${uid}: "									>> /tmp/$$
-	  chmod 600										   /tmp/$$
-	  curl -# --insecure -n --url \
-		"imaps://${1}/INBOX;UID=${uid};SECTION=HEADER.FIELDS%20(DATE%20FROM%20TO%20SUBJECT)"	>> /tmp/$$ 2>/dev/null || break
-	done
-	sed 's/\n\n/\n/g'										<  /tmp/$$ | less
-	rm												   /tmp/$$
-	;;
-    esac
-      exit
-      ;;
-*)
-  server="$1"
-  shift
-  while [ $# != 0 ]
-  do  # iterate requested messages
-    message=`echo "$1" | tr -d -c '[:digit:]'`	# sanitize input
-    shift
-    rm									   /tmp/$$ 2>/dev/null
-    echo -n "${message}: "							>> /tmp/$$
-    chmod 600								   /tmp/$$
-    curl -# --insecure -n --url "imaps://${server}/INBOX;UID=${message}"	>> /tmp/$$ 2>/dev/null
-    sed 's/\n\n/\n/g'							<  /tmp/$$ | less
-    rm									   /tmp/$$
-  done
-  exit
-  ;;
-esac
-</code>
-----
-===== References =====
-http://crystalfaeries.net/fae/curlmail.html