Retrieving e-mails by using IMAP with imaplib

As we mentioned previously, accessing e-mail over the IMAP protocol doesn't necessarily download the message to the local computer or mobile phone. So, this can be very efficient, even when used over any low bandwidth Internet connection.

Python provides a client-side library called imaplib, which can be used for accessing e-mails over the IMAP protocol. This provides the IMAP4() class, which implements the IMAP protocol. It takes two arguments, that is, host and port for implementing this protocol. By default, 143 has been used as the port number.

The derived class, that is, IMAP4_SSL(), provides a secure version of the IMAP4 protocol. It connects over an SSL encrypted socket. So, you will need an SSL friendly socket module. The default port is 993. Similar to POP3_SSL(), you can supply the path to a private key and a certificate file path.

A typical example of what an IMAP client looks like can be seen here:

  mailbox = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(<IMAP_SERVER...