GMail for Ruby

A Rubyesque interface to Google's GMail, with all the tools you'll need. Search, read and send multipart emails, archive, mark as read/unread, delete emails, and manage labels.

It's based on Daniel Parker's ruby-gmail gem. This version has more friendy API, is well tested, better documented and have many other improvements.

Author(s)

Kriss 'nu7hatch' Kowalik
Daniel Parker of BehindLogic.com

Extra thanks for specific feature contributions from:

Installation

You can install it easy using rubygems:

sudo gem install gmail

Or install it manualy:

git clone git://github.com/nu7hatch/gmail.git
cd gmail
rake install

To install gmail gem you have to met following requirements (with rubygems all will be installed automatically):

mail
mime
smpt_tls (Ruby < 1.8.7)

Features

Search emails
Read emails (handles attachments)
Emails: label, archive, delete, mark as read/unread/spam, star
Manage labels
Create and send multipart email messages in plaintext and/or html, with inline images and attachments
Utilizes Gmail's IMAP & SMTP, MIME-type detection and parses and generates MIME properly.

Basic usage

First of all require the gmail library.

require 'gmail'

Authenticating gmail sessions

This will you automatically log in to your account.

gmail = Gmail.connect(username, password)
# play with your gmail...
gmail.logout

If you pass a block, the session will be passed into the block, and the session will be logged out after the block is executed.

Gmail.connect(username, password) do |gmail|
  # play with your gmail...
end

Examples above are "quiet", it means that it will not raise any errors when session couldn't be started (eg. because of connection error or invalid authorization data). You can use connection which handles errors raising:

Gmail.connect!(username, password)
Gmail.connect!(username, password) {|gmail| ... play with gmail ... }

You can also check if you are logged in at any time:

Gmail.connect(username, password) do |gmail|
  gmail.logged_in?
end

XOAuth authentication

From v0.4.0 it's possible to authenticate with your Gmail account using XOAuth method. It's very simple:

gmail = Gmail.connect(:xoauth, "[email protected]", 
  :token           => 'TOKEN',
  :secret          => 'TOKEN_SECRET',
  :consumer_key    => 'CONSUMER_KEY',
  :consumer_secret => 'CONSUMER_SECRET'
)

For more information check out the gmail_xoauth gem from Nicolas Fouché.

Counting and gathering emails

Get counts for messages in the inbox:

gmail.inbox.count
gmail.inbox.count(:unread)
gmail.inbox.count(:read)

Count with some criteria:

gmail.inbox.count(:after => Date.parse("2010-02-20"), :before => Date.parse("2010-03-20"))
gmail.inbox.count(:on => Date.parse("2010-04-15"))
gmail.inbox.count(:from => "[email protected]")
gmail.inbox.count(:to => "[email protected]")

Combine flags and options:

gmail.inbox.count(:unread, :from => "[email protected]")

Browsing labeled emails is similar to work with inbox.

gmail.mailbox('Urgent').count

Getting messages works the same way as counting: Remember that every message in a conversation/thread will come as a separate message.

gmail.inbox.emails(:unread, :before => Date.parse("2010-04-20"), :from => "[email protected]")

You can use also one of aliases:

gmail.inbox.find(...)
gmail.inbox.search(...)
gmail.inbox.mails(...)

Also you can manipulate each message using block style:

gmail.inbox.find(:unread) do |email|
  email.read!
end

Working with emails!

Any news older than 4-20, mark as read and archive it:

gmail.inbox.find(:before => Date.parse("2010-04-20"), :from => "[email protected]") do |email|
  email.read! # can also unread!, spam! or star!
  email.archive!
end

Delete emails from X:

gmail.inbox.find(:from => "[email protected]").each do |email|
  email.delete!
end

Save all attachments in the "Faxes" label to a local folder:

folder = "/where/ever"
gmail.mailbox("Faxes").emails do |email|
  if !email.message.attachments.empty?
    email.message.save_attachments_to(folder)
  end
end

You can use also #label method instead of #mailbox:

gmail.label("Faxes").emails {|email| ... }

Save just the first attachment from the newest unread email (assuming pdf):

email = gmail.inbox.find(:unread).first
email.attachments[0].save_to_file("/path/to/location")

Add a label to a message:

email.label("Faxes")

Example above will raise error when you don't have the Faxes label. You can avoid this using:

email.label!("Faxes") # The `Faxes` label will be automatically created now

You can also move message to a label/mailbox:

email.move_to("Faxes")
email.move_to!("NewLabel")

There is also few shortcuts to mark messages quickly:

email.read!
email.unread!
email.spam!
email.star!
email.unstar!

Managing labels

With Gmail gem you can also manage your labels. You can get list of defined labels:

gmail.labels.all

Create new label:

gmail.labels.new("Urgent")
gmail.labels.add("AnotherOne")

Remove labels:

gmail.labels.delete("Uregent")

Or check if given label exists:

gmail.labels.exists?("Uregent") # => false
gmail.labels.exists?("AnotherOne") # => true

Composing and sending emails

Creating emails now uses the amazing Mail rubygem. See its documentation here. The Ruby Gmail will automatically configure your Mail emails to be sent via your Gmail account's SMTP, so they will be in your Gmail's "Sent" folder. Also, no need to specify the "From" email either, because ruby-gmail will set it for you.

gmail.deliver do
  to "[email protected]"
  subject "Having fun in Puerto Rico!"
  text_part do
    body "Text of plaintext message."
  end
  html_part do
    body "<p>Text of <em>html</em> message.</p>"
  end
  add_file "/path/to/some_image.jpg"
end

Or, compose the message first and send it later

email = gmail.compose do
  to "[email protected]"
  subject "Having fun in Puerto Rico!"
  body "Spent the day on the road..."
end
email.deliver! # or: gmail.deliver(email)

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

Fork the project.
Make your feature addition or bug fix.
Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright

Copyrignt (c) 2010 Kriss 'nu7hatch' Kowalik

See LICENSE for details.