[Users] Save all attachments from all emails

[Philippe Gramoullé]

Hello Holger,

On Sat, 20 Apr 2013 20:59:16 +0200
Holger Berndt <berndth at gmx.de> wrote:

  | Hello Philippe,
  | 
  | On Sa, 20.04.2013 00:37, Philippe Gramoullé wrote:
  | 
  | >Well, since i have so many years worth of email, i'd like to extract all attachments
  | >of all emails in a single folder so i can more easily browse through pictures, PDFs, videos, etc..
  | >
  | >Basically, i'd like to use the same feature as "Save all attachments" but for all emails inside a folder
  | >
  | >What would be the easiest way ? Perl/Python script using the Perl/Python plugins ?
  | 
  | I think it would probably be easiest to do it from outside Claws Mail.
  | Claws Mail's default storage format MH is quite easy to parse for
  | other tools.
  | 
  | I attached a script that I use as a filter to store pictures of some
  | incomming mails automatically to a folder - but it should also be able
  | to do what you want, e.g.
  | 
  | store all attachments of a mail folder tree
  | 
  |   extract_attachments_from_mime_message.py --all-content-types --recursive /path/to/mail/folder /path/to/target/folder
  | 
  | You can also select which attachments to store based on MIME type,
  | e.g. only image/* and application/pdf:
  |   
  |   extract_attachments_from_mime_message.py --content-type image --content-type application/pdf --recursive /path/to/mail/folder /path/to/target/folder
  | 
  | Maybe it helps. Beware that these are not very well tested (because I 
  | use the script differently) - no guarantees.
  | 
  | You can also check out --help.
  | 
  | Holger

Well, thank you so much, this is _exactly_ what i was looking for !

Right now, i'm more looking into "--all-content-types" as i want to extract (and backup) every possible attachment from my MH Folder.

I tried your script in few directories and it works 99.99% of the time, which means that i was able to find, for now, a few emails that would make the script exit with with an error:

./extract_attachments_from_mime_message.py --all-content-types ~/SylpheedMail/inbox/32831 /tmp/claws-mime3
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "./extract_attachments_from_mime_message.py", line 170, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "./extract_attachments_from_mime_message.py", line 166, in main
    extract_attachments(args.mime_filename, args.target_directory[0], args.content_type, args.subfolder_by_sender, args.recursive)
  File "./extract_attachments_from_mime_message.py", line 133, in extract_attachments
    mime_file.extract(target_directory, patterns)
  File "./extract_attachments_from_mime_message.py", line 102, in extract
    fp.write(part.get_payload(decode=True))
TypeError: must be string or buffer, not None

If you're interested to reproduce and fix , i can provide you the offending emails offlist. These are mainly mails with dozens of attachments.

Thanks for your help :)

Truly yours,

Philippe