Gmail Data Analysis

Question

I am using Imaplib to fetch data from Gmail and get the number of emails each day. I am going to login using Imaplib twice for fetching emails for the inbox well as for the outbox (sent mail). Is it possible that I have to login only once and get result as I need?

The code works fine and I am asking for review that how I can do more optimizations with this approach.

from imaplib import IMAP4_SSL 
from datetime import date, timedelta, datetime 
from time import mktime 
from email.utils import parsedate 
import email
import pygal


address = '<Your Email>'
password = '<password>'
inbox = 'INBOX'
outbox = '[Gmail]/Sent Mail'
d = 6

def inbox_week(address,password,inbox,d):

    Monday_Tuple = ('M','o','n')
    Monday_List = []

    Tuesday_Tuple = ('T','u','e')
    Tuesday_List = []

    Wednesday_Tuple = ('W','e','d')
    Wednesday_List = []

    Thursday_Tuple = ('T','h','u')
    Thursday_List = []

    Friday_Tuple = ('F','r','i')
    Friday_List = []

    Saturday_Tuple = ('S','a','t')
    Saturday_List = []

    Sunday_Tuple = ('S','u','n')
    Sunday_List = []

    mail = IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
    mail.login(address, password)
    mail.select(inbox)
    interval = (date.today()-timedelta(d)).strftime("%d-%b-%Y")


    result, data =                mail.uid('search',None,'(SENTSINCE{date})'.format(date=interval))
    for num in data[0].split():

        result, data = mail.uid('fetch',num,'(RFC822)')
        msg = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
        msg['Date']
        main_date = msg['Date']
        Date_Tuple = main_date[0],main_date[1],main_date[2]

        if (Date_Tuple==Monday_Tuple):
            Monday_List.append(Monday_Tuple)        

        if (Date_Tuple == Tuesday_Tuple):
            Tuesday_List.append(Tuesday_Tuple)

        if (Date_Tuple == Wednesday_Tuple):
            Wednesday_List.append(Wednesday_Tuple)



        if (Date_Tuple == Thursday_Tuple):
            Thursday_List.append(Thursday_Tuple)

        if (Date_Tuple == Friday_Tuple):
            Friday_List.append(Friday_Tuple)

        if (Date_Tuple == Saturday_Tuple):
            Saturday_List.append(Saturday_Tuple)

        if (Date_Tuple == Sunday_Tuple):
            Sunday_List.append(Sunday_Tuple)


    monday_inbox = len(Monday_List)

    tuesday_inbox =  len(Tuesday_List)

    wednesday_inbox =  len(Wednesday_List)    

    thursday_inbox = len(Thursday_List)

    friday_inbox =  len(Friday_List)

    saturday_inbox =  len(Saturday_List)

    sunday_inbox =  len(Sunday_List)

    return           monday_inbox,tuesday_inbox,wednesday_inbox,thursday_inbox,friday_inbox,saturday_inbox,sunday_inbox

a,b,c,d,e,f,g = inbox_week(address,password,inbox,d)

def outbox_week(address,password,outbox,d):
    Monday_Tuple = ('M','o','n')
    Monday_List = []

    Tuesday_Tuple = ('T','u','e')
    Tuesday_List = []

    Wednesday_Tuple = ('W','e','d')
    Wednesday_List = []

    Thursday_Tuple = ('T','h','u')
    Thursday_List = []

    Friday_Tuple = ('F','r','i')
    Friday_List = []

    Saturday_Tuple = ('S','a','t')
    Saturday_List = []

    Sunday_Tuple = ('S','u','n')
    Sunday_List = []

    mail = IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
    mail.login(address, password)
    mail.select(outbox)

    interval = (date.today()-timedelta(d)).strftime("%d-%b-%Y")
    result, data = mail.uid('search', None,'(SENTSINCE {date})'.format(date=interval))

   for num in data[0].split():

       result, data = mail.uid('fetch',num,'(RFC822)')
       msg = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])

       main_date = msg['Date']
       Date_Tuple = main_date[0],main_date[1],main_date[2]

       if (Date_Tuple==Monday_Tuple):
           Monday_List.append(Monday_Tuple)        

       if (Date_Tuple == Tuesday_Tuple):
           Tuesday_List.append(Tuesday_Tuple)

       if (Date_Tuple == Wednesday_Tuple):
           Wednesday_List.append(Wednesday_Tuple)



       if (Date_Tuple == Thursday_Tuple):
           Thursday_List.append(Thursday_Tuple)

       if (Date_Tuple == Friday_Tuple):
           Friday_List.append(Friday_Tuple)

       if (Date_Tuple == Saturday_Tuple):
           Saturday_List.append(Saturday_Tuple)

       if (Date_Tuple == Sunday_Tuple):
           Sunday_List.append(Sunday_Tuple)


       monday_outbox = len(Monday_List)

       tuesday_outbox =  len(Tuesday_List)

       wednesday_outbox =  len(Wednesday_List)    

       thursday_outbox = len(Thursday_List)

       friday_outbox =  len(Friday_List)

       saturday_outbox =  len(Saturday_List)

       sunday_outbox =  len(Sunday_List)

    return      monday_outbox,tuesday_outbox,wednesday_outbox,thursday_outbox,friday_outbox,saturday_outbox,sunday_outbox

aa,bb,cc,dd,ee,ff,gg = outbox_week(address,password,outbox,d)

bar_chart = pygal.Bar()
bar_chart.title = 'Weekly Email Analysis'
bar_chart.x_labels =     ('Monday','Tuesday','Wednesday','Thursday','Friday','Saturday','Sunday')
bar_chart.add('Received', [a,b,c,d,e,f,g])
bar_chart.add('Sent',[aa,bb,cc,dd,ee,ff,gg])
bar_chart.render_to_file('honey4.svg')

Answer 1

Firstly, I am going to make numerous references to Python's style guide. If you've adopted a different guide, you should mention it in the question; if you haven't adopted any, adopt this one. Following a consistent, conventional coding guide makes your code much easier for others to read.

---

Your imports are in the wrong order. This may seem like a minor thing, but it's useful to at least clarify visually which are third-party libraries, and alphabetical order makes it easier to scan for a given library:

from datetime import date, timedelta
import email
from imaplib import IMAP4_SSL 

import pygal

I've also removed several you aren't actually using.

---

Constants should be named in UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES:

ADDRESS = '<Your Email>'
PASSWORD = '<password>'
...

---

What exactly does:

d = 6

mean? I cannot figure out why you're using it at all, and note that you replace it with whatever inbox_week returns anyway, so by the time you call outbox_week you're actually passing Thursday's inbox count.

At the very least add a comment explaining why d is 6, or better yet use a name that makes it clear. In this case, it looks like it's supposed to be the number of days, so DAYS = 6 would be better.

---

The whole <Weekday>_Tuple, <Weekday>_List thing is completely bewildering, not least because the tuples are constants (again, UPPERCASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES, please) and should therefore be declared once, rather than redefined every time either function (for, in defiance of the Redundancy Department of Redundancy, you've repeated this code twice) gets called. I don't understand:

• why you're creating the lists and the tuples at all, when you don't seem to care about building a list of emails (in fact, you put the tuple, rather than the email, into the list!)
• why you would create a tuple ('M', 'o', 'n') to compare to the first three characters of the date, rather than just comparing the string main_date[:3] == 'Mon'; and
• why you don't use elif, even though there's no way more than one comparison can be true so you're just wasting cycles testing them.

Also, a minor style point, but the parentheses in e.g. if (Date_Tuple == Tuesday_Tuple): are redundant.

Rather than create multiple separate variables, and making pointless lists of tuples, why not a list [mon_count, tue_count, ..., sun_count], or a dictionary {'Mon': mon_count, ...}? You could even use a collections.Counter, which will do most of the work for you.

---

In another breach of DRYness, note that your two functions are identical, except that they access different mailboxen. Why not make a single function, and specify the mailbox to use? In fact, I note that inbox and outbox are parameters to the function, despite being global constants, which doesn't make much sense. I would split this into more, smaller functions, each with an explanatory docstring.

---

Finally, the chart-writing bit seems OK, but I would be inclined to wrap that in a function too. You should generally have as little code as possible running at the top level of your script, preferring instead to define a specific entry point (conventionally called main) and calling it when the script is run directly with:

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

This makes it easier to import your functionality elsewhere later, without running it unnecessarily.

---

Here's an alternative, making the changes I've suggested.

Note: I haven't been able to test it, but it should do exactly what the original did.

from datetime import date, timedelta 
import email
from imaplib import IMAP4_SSL 

import pygal

ADDRESS = '...'
PASSWORD = '...'

SERVER = 'imap.gmail.com'
INBOX = 'INBOX'
OUTBOX = '[Gmail]/Sent Mail'

DAYS = ('Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat', 'Sun')

def access_mail_server(server, address, password):
    """Connect to the specified mail server and log in."""
    mail = IMAP4_SSL(server)
    mail.login(address, password)
    return mail

def list_mailbox_content(mail, since):
    """Get a list of IDs for all mail in the current mailbox."""
    _, data = mail.uid('search', None, '(SENTSINCE {})'.format(since))
    return data[0].split()

def fetch_message(mail, num):
    """Fetch a message from the current mailbox."""
    _, data = mail.uid('fetch', num, '(RFC822)')
    return email.message_from_string(data[0][1])

def one_week_ago():
    """Get the date from one week ago in the required format."""
    return (date.today()-timedelta(days=6)).strftime("%d-%b-%Y")

def mailbox_counts(mail, mailbox):
    """Get the counts of emails by day over the last week."""
    counts = [0 for _ in DAYS]
    mail.select(mailbox)
    for id_ in list_mailbox_content(mail, since=one_week_ago()):
        msg = fetch_message(mail, id_)
        counts[DAYS.index(msg['Date'][:3])] += 1
    return counts

def graph_activity(mail, mailboxes):
    """Graph the last week's mail activity."""
    bar_chart = pygal.Bar()
    bar_chart.title = 'Weekly Email Analysis'
    bar_chart.x_labels = DAYS
    for title, mailbox in mailboxes:
        bar_chart.add(title, mailbox_counts(mail, mailbox))
    bar_chart.render_to_file('honey4.svg')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    graph_activity(
        access_mail_server(SERVER, ADDRESS, PASSWORD),
        [('Received', INBOX), ('Sent', OUTBOX)],
    )