Deleting Email and More with the PyMailGUI Client (
Page 1 of 4 )
Continuing our tour through PyMailGUI, this week we show you how to delete email, explain POP message numbers and synchronization, and finally begin talking about the code. This article, the fourth of six parts, is excerpted from chapter 15 of the book Programming Python, Third Edition, written by Mark Lutz (O'Reilly, 2006; ISBN: 0596009259). Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Used with permission from the publisher. Available from booksellers or direct from O'Reilly Media.
Deleting Email
So far, we’ve covered every action button on list windows except for Delete and the All checkbox. The All checkbox simply toggles from selecting all messages at once or deselecting all (View, Delete, Reply, Fwd, and Save action buttons apply to all currently selected messages). PyMailGUI also lets us delete messages from the server permanently, so that we won’t see them the next time we access our inbox.
Delete operations are kicked off the same way as Views and Saves; just press the Delete button instead. In typical operation, I eventually delete email I’m not interested in, and save and delete emails that are important. We met Save earlier in this demo.
Figure 15-31. PyMailGUI view forwarded mail
Figure 15-32. PyMailGUI view forwarded mail, raw
Like View, Save, and other operations, Delete can be applied to one or more messages. Deletes happen immediately, and like all server transfers they are run in a non-blocking thread but are performed only if you verify the operation in a popup, such as the one shown in Figure 15-33.
Figure 15-33. PyMailGUI delete verification on quit
By design, no mail is ever removed automatically: you will see the same messages the next time PyMailGUI runs. It deletes mail from your server only when you ask it to, and then only if verified in the last popup shown (this is your last chance to prevent permanent mail removal). After the deletions are performed, the mail index is updated, and the GUI session continues.
Deletions disable mail loads and other deletes while running and cannot be run in parallel with loads or other deletes already in progress because they may change POP message numbers and thus modify the mail index list. Messages may still be composed during a deletion, however, and offline save files may be processed.
