Use imaplib and oauth to connect to Gmail

Question

I want to use Oauth to connect to Gmail in Python. Right now I have an xoauth.py script from google ( link ) and the marker generation works fine, but how can I use this in another script? It will be in Django.

Now my script is written as follows:

m = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL("imap.gmail.com") m.login("[e-mail]", "password") 

But I want something more secure.

Answer 1

Here is an example of using the oauth2 module for authentication using oauth, taken from the readme file:

 import oauth2 as oauth import oauth2.clients.imap as imaplib # Set up your Consumer and Token as per usual. Just like any other # three-legged OAuth request. consumer = oauth.Consumer('your_consumer_key', 'your_consumer_secret') token = oauth.Token('your_users_3_legged_token', 'your_users_3_legged_token_secret') # Setup the URL according to Google XOAUTH implementation. Be sure # to replace the email here with the appropriate email address that # you wish to access. url = "https://mail.google.com/mail/b/[e-mail]/imap/" conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.googlemail.com') conn.debug = 4 # This is the only thing in the API for impaplib.IMAP4_SSL that has # changed. You now authenticate with the URL, consumer, and token. conn.authenticate(url, consumer, token) # Once authenticated everything from the impalib.IMAP4_SSL class will # work as per usual without any modification to your code. conn.select('INBOX') print conn.list() 

Pretty little cleaner than using xoauth .

Answer 2

Here is an example of connecting to IMAP using the routines provided by Google xoauth.py . It will output some debugging information, so you probably want to switch to using the oauth package for a real application. At least this should start:

 import imaplib import random import time import xoauth MY_EMAIL = '[e-mail]' MY_TOKEN = # your token MY_SECRET = # your secret def connect(): nonce = str(random.randrange(2**64 - 1)) timestamp = str(int(time.time())) consumer = xoauth.OAuthEntity('anonymous', 'anonymous') access = xoauth.OAuthEntity(MY_TOKEN, MY_SECRET) token = xoauth.GenerateXOauthString( consumer, access, MY_EMAIL, 'imap', MY_EMAIL, nonce, timestamp) imap_conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.googlemail.com') imap_conn.authenticate('XOAUTH', lambda x: token) imap_conn.select('INBOX') return imap_conn connect() 

Answer 3

Google has a good example code for OAuth2 and IMAP . Also make sure your volume is correct.

 'scope': 'https://mail.google.com/' 'access_type': 'offline' 

Below is a sample code in a Google example

 import base64 import imaplib my_email = "[e-mail]" access_token = "" #Oauth2 access token auth_string = GenerateOAuth2String(my_email, access_token, base64_encode=False) TestImapAuthentication(my_email, auth_string) def TestImapAuthentication(user, auth_string): """Authenticates to IMAP with the given auth_string. Prints a debug trace of the attempted IMAP connection. Args: user: The Gmail username (full email address) auth_string: A valid OAuth2 string, as returned by GenerateOAuth2String. Must not be base64-encoded, since imaplib does its own base64-encoding. """ print imap_conn = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com') imap_conn.debug = 4 imap_conn.authenticate('XOAUTH2', lambda x: auth_string) imap_conn.select('INBOX') def GenerateOAuth2String(username, access_token, base64_encode=True): """Generates an IMAP OAuth2 authentication string. See https://developers.google.com/google-apps/gmail/oauth2_overview Args: username: the username (email address) of the account to authenticate access_token: An OAuth2 access token. base64_encode: Whether to base64-encode the output. Returns: The SASL argument for the OAuth2 mechanism. """ auth_string = 'user=%s\1auth=Bearer %s\1\1' % (username, access_token) if base64_encode: auth_string = base64.b64encode(auth_string) return auth_string