According to the documentation referenced below a Message should contain a MessagePart which in turn should contain a MessagePartBody.
https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/reference/rest/v1/users.messages#Message
When I run the code below (it's just a modified version of the sample script found here with messages substituted for labels)
from __future__ import print_function
import pickle
import os.path
import openpyxl
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from google_auth_oauthlib.flow import InstalledAppFlow
from google.auth.transport.requests import Request
# If modifying these scopes, delete the file token.pickle.
SCOPES = ['https://mail.google.com/']
def main():
"""Shows basic usage of the Gmail API.
Lists the user's Gmail labels.
"""
creds = None
# The file token.pickle stores the user's access and refresh tokens, and is
# created automatically when the authorization flow completes for the first
# time.
if os.path.exists('token.pickle'):
with open('token.pickle', 'rb') as token:
creds = pickle.load(token)
# If there are no (valid) credentials available, let the user log in.
if not creds or not creds.valid:
if creds and creds.expired and creds.refresh_token:
creds.refresh(Request())
else:
flow = InstalledAppFlow.from_client_secrets_file(
'credentials.json', SCOPES)
creds = flow.run_local_server(port=0)
# Save the credentials for the next run
with open('token.pickle', 'wb') as token:
pickle.dump(creds, token)
service = build('gmail', 'v1', credentials=creds)
# Call the Gmail API
results = service.users().messages().list(userId='me').execute()
messages = results.get('messages', [])
if not messages:
print('No messages found.')
else:
print('Messages:')
for message in messages:
print(message)
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()
I get only Messageids and Threadsids eg:
Messages:
{'id': '177045ba844e1991', 'threadId': '177045ba844e1991'}
{'id': '1770415ccdd222d7', 'threadId': '1770415ccdd222d7'}
{'id': '17703970573550eb', 'threadId': '17703970573550eb'}
{'id': '177031073928a223', 'threadId': '177031073928a223'}
{'id': '17702de505951773', 'threadId': '17702de505951773'}
{'id': '17702a3e6d1893de', 'threadId': '17702a3e6d1893de'}
How can I get the actual body of a message using this API?
As stated in the documentation of users.messages.list
:
Note that each message resource contains only an
id
and athreadId
. Additional message details can be fetched using the messages.get method.
So basically it is a two step process:
list
to get the emails in the inbox.get
to read information about them.Which it looks something like:
results = service.users().messages().list(userId='me').execute()
messages = results.get('messages', [])
messages = [service.users().messages().get(userId='me', id=msg['id']).execute() for msg in messages]
Now, if you do that, you will run into problems as this makes the requests 1 by 1. The way of getting multiple messages with one request is using a batch request:
results = service.users().messages().list(userId='me').execute()
message_ids = results.get('messages', [])
messages = []
def add(id, msg, err):
# id is given because this will not be called in the same order
if err:
print(err)
else:
messages.append(msg)
batch = service.new_batch_http_request()
for msg in message_ids:
batch.add(service.users().messages().get(userId='me', id=msg['id']), add)
batch.execute()
One important note about batch requests is that the order in which the callback is called can be different from the order that you started with.