How to parse eml file and extract meta-data informations - python-3.x

Question

I have an eml file with some attachments. I want to read text content in eml file and I want to extract meta-data information like(sender, from, cc, bcc, subject). Also I want to download the attachments as well. With the help of the below code I am only able to extract information/ text content in the body of the email.
import email
from email import policy
from email.parser import BytesParser
import glob
file_list = glob.glob('*.eml') # returns list of files
with open(file_list[2], 'rb') as fp: # select a specific email file from the list
msg = BytesParser(policy=policy.default).parse(fp)
text = msg.get_body(preferencelist=('plain')).get_content()
print(text)
There was module name emaildata which was available for Python 2 did the job.
Extracting MetaData Informations
import email
from emaildata.metadata import MetaData
message = email.message_from_file(open('message.eml'))
extractor = MetaData(message)
data = extractor.to_dict()
print data.keys()
Extracting Attachment Information
import email
from emaildata.attachment import Attachment
message = email.message_from_file(open('message.eml'))
for content, filename, mimetype, message in Attachment.extract(message):
print filename
with open(filename, 'w') as stream:
stream.write(content)
# If message is not None then it is an instance of email.message.Message
if message:
print "The file {0} is a message with attachments.".format(filename)
But this library is now deprecated and is of now use. Is there any other library that could extract the meta-data and attachment related information?

Answer 1

Meta-data information could be accessed using below code in Python 3.x
from email import policy
from email.parser import BytesParser
with open(eml_file, 'rb') as fp:
msg = BytesParser(policy=policy.default).parse(fp)
print('To:', msg['to'])
print('From:', msg['from'])
print('Subject:', msg['subject'])
Remaining header informations could be accessed using msg.keys()
For downloading attachments from an eml file you can use the below code:
import sys
import os
import os.path
from collections import defaultdict
from email.parser import Parser
eml_mail = 'your eml file'
output_dir = 'mention the directory where you want the files to be download'
def parse_message(filename):
with open(filename) as f:
return Parser().parse(f)
def find_attachments(message):
"""
Return a tuple of parsed content-disposition dict, message object
for each attachment found.
"""
found = []
for part in message.walk():
if 'content-disposition' not in part:
continue
cdisp = part['content-disposition'].split(';')
cdisp = [x.strip() for x in cdisp]
if cdisp[0].lower() != 'attachment':
continue
parsed = {}
for kv in cdisp[1:]:
key, val = kv.split('=')
if val.startswith('"'):
val = val.strip('"')
elif val.startswith("'"):
val = val.strip("'")
parsed[key] = val
found.append((parsed, part))
return found
def run(eml_filename, output_dir):
msg = parse_message(eml_filename)
attachments = find_attachments(msg)
print ("Found {0} attachments...".format(len(attachments)))
if not os.path.isdir(output_dir):
os.mkdir(output_dir)
for cdisp, part in attachments:
cdisp_filename = os.path.normpath(cdisp['filename'])
# prevent malicious crap
if os.path.isabs(cdisp_filename):
cdisp_filename = os.path.basename(cdisp_filename)
towrite = os.path.join(output_dir, cdisp_filename)
print( "Writing " + towrite)
with open(towrite, 'wb') as fp:
data = part.get_payload(decode=True)
fp.write(data)
run(eml_mail, output_dir)

Answer 2

Have a look at: ParsEML it bulk extracts attachments from all eml files in a directory (originally from Stephan Hügel). And i used a modified version of MeIOC to easily extract all metadata in json format; if you want i can share that to.