Programming Python, Second Edition

The PyMailGui Email Client

As a finale for this chapter’s email tools coverage, this section presents PyMailGui -- a Python/Tkinter program that implements a client-side email processing user interface. It is presented both as an instance of Python Internet scripting and as an example that ties together other tools we’ve already seen, such as threads and Tkinter GUIs.

Like the pymail program we wrote earlier, PyMailGui runs entirely on your local computer. Your email is fetched from and sent to remote mail servers over sockets, but the program and its user interface run locally. Because of that, PyMailGui is called an email client : it employs Python’s client-side tools to talk to mail servers from the local machine. In fact, in some ways, PyMailGui builds on top of pymail to add a GUI. Unlike pymail, though, PyMailGui is a fairly full-featured user interface: email operations are performed with point-and-click operations.

Why PyMailGui?

Like many examples presented in this text, PyMailGui is also a practical, useful program. In fact, I run it on all kinds of machines to check my email while traveling around the world teaching Python classes (it’s another workaround for Telnet-challenged ISPs). Although PyMailGui won’t put Microsoft Outlook out of business anytime soon, I like it for two reasons:

It’s portable

PyMailGui runs on any machine with sockets and a Python with Tkinter installed. Because email is transferred with the Python libraries, any Internet connection will do. ...