Gmail api python encode/decode error

Question

I have a problem. I am trying to read emails from gmail using the gmail api. I followed the instructions from here https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/v1/reference/users/messages/get

I made a few changes to run it on python 3, so I ended up with the following code:

def GetMimeMessage(service, user_id, msg_id):
try:
  message = service.users().messages().get(userId=user_id, id=msg_id,
                                         format='raw').execute()

  print ('Message snippet: %s' % message['snippet'])
  msg_str = base64.urlsafe_b64decode(message['raw'].encode('utf8'))
  mime_msg = email.message_from_bytes(msg_str)
  print(mime_msg)

  return mime_msg
except errors.HttpError as error:
  print ('An error occurred: %s' % error)

Now the output is very close to what I would love to have, but there is a problem that the Hungarian accented characters in the output are weird: G=C3=A1bor instead of Gábor

And also the html tags are kind broken:

Follow us:          =09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09=09<a href=3D"http=

I have already figured out that this is related to fact how the message is encoded, see header of the email:

Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

The problem is, that I can't seem to find a way to decode it properly. Ever help is appreciated.

Tuppitappi · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-24 19:43:44Z

5

After hours of struggling with the same problem myself, I finally found the solution (at least for my case). Even through the thread is old, I'm posting it here so that others may find it later. Here it goes:

# Get your message
message = service.users().messages().get(userId=user_id, id=msg_id, format='full').execute()

# Get the right body data item (this part was my Heureka-moment as there are several 'data' keys)
content = message['payload']['parts'][0]['parts'][1]['body']['data']

# Encode
msg_body = base64.urlsafe_b64decode(content).decode('utf-8')

This sequence got the de/encoding working for me. There are as many different solution suggestions out there as there are threads about the decoding/encoding issues with base64 and Google Gmail API but it seems that each case is unique. Hope this solution also helps you!

answered Jul 24, 2018 at 19:43

Tuppitappi

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1 Comment

DaSarfyCode Over a year ago

I spent a whole day trying to solve this. Thanks a lot! This should be covered by Google in their documentation.

Patrick · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-08 18:19:51Z

Thanks Tuppitappi. The Gmail API doc for Python could be a bit clearer. The above solutions works for me too. I could retrieve the content the following way:

 msgs = message['payload']['parts']
 msg = msgs[1]['body']['data']

The MessagePart may consist of different parts:

"parts": [
      {
        "partId": "0",
        "mimeType": "text/plain",
        "filename": "",
        "headers": [
          { "name": "Content-type", "value": "text/plain;charset=utf-8" },
          { "name": "Content-Transfer-Encoding", "value": "quoted-printable" }
        ],
        "body": {
          "size": 1887,
          "data": "ascii string to be decoded"
        }
      },
      {
        "partId": "1",
        "mimeType": "text/html",
        "filename": "",
        "headers": [
          { "name": "Content-type", "value": "text/html;charset=utf-8" },
          { "name": "Content-Transfer-Encoding", "value": "quoted-printable" }
        ],
        "body": {
          "size": 66970,
          "data": "longer ascii string to be decoded"
        }
      }
    ]

Extract from the Doc for the full payload:

Resource representations An email message.

{   "id": string,   "threadId": string,   "labelIds": [
    string   ],   "snippet": string,   "historyId": unsigned long,   "internalDate": long,   "payload": {
    "partId": string,
    "mimeType": string,
    "filename": string,
    "headers": [
      {
        "name": string,
        "value": string
      }
    ],
    "body": users.messages.attachments Resource,
    "parts": [
      (MessagePart)
    ]   },   "sizeEstimate": integer,   "raw": bytes }

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