Python Standard Library

The rfc822 Module

The rfc822 module contains a parser for mail and news messages (and any other messages that conform to the RFC 822 standard, such as HTTP headers).

Basically, an RFC 822–style message consists of a number of header fields, followed by at least one blank line, and the message body itself.

For example, here’s a short mail message. The first five lines make up the message header, and the actual message (a single line, in this case) follows after an empty line:

Message-Id: <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 14:55:07 -0500
To: "Fredrik Lundh" <[e-mail]>
From: Frank
Subject: Re: python library book!

Where is it?

Example 6-1 shows how the message parser reads the headers and returns a dictionary-like object, with the message headers as keys.

Example 6-1. Using the rfc822 Module

File: rfc822-example-1.py

import rfc822

file = open("samples/sample.eml")

message = rfc822.Message(file)

for k, v in message.items():
    print k, "=", v

print len(file.read()), "bytes in body"

subject = Re: python library book!
from = "Frank" <your@editor>
message-id = <[e-mail]>
to = "Fredrik Lundh" <[e-mail]>
date = Tue, 14 Nov 2000 14:55:07 -0500
25 bytes in body

The message object also provides a couple of convenience methods, which parse address fields and dates for you, as shown in Example 6-2.

Example 6-2. Parsing Header Fields Using the rfc822 Module

File: rfc822-example-2.py import rfc822 file = open("samples/sample.eml") ...