How can I download all emails with attachments from Gmail?

Hard one :-)

import email, getpass, imaplib, osdetach_dir = '.' # directory where to save attachments (default: current)user = raw_input("Enter your GMail username:")pwd = getpass.getpass("Enter your password: ")# connecting to the gmail imap serverm = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL("imap.gmail.com")m.login(user,pwd)m.select("[Gmail]/All Mail") # here you a can choose a mail box like INBOX instead# use m.list() to get all the mailboxesresp, items = m.search(None, "ALL") # you could filter using the IMAP rules here (check http://www.example-code.com/csharp/imap-search-critera.asp)items = items[0].split() # getting the mails idfor emailid in items:    resp, data = m.fetch(emailid, "(RFC822)") # fetching the mail, "`(RFC822)`" means "get the whole stuff", but you can ask for headers only, etc    email_body = data[0][1] # getting the mail content    mail = email.message_from_string(email_body) # parsing the mail content to get a mail object    #Check if any attachments at all    if mail.get_content_maintype() != 'multipart':        continue    print "["+mail["From"]+"] :" + mail["Subject"]    # we use walk to create a generator so we can iterate on the parts and forget about the recursive headach    for part in mail.walk():        # multipart are just containers, so we skip them        if part.get_content_maintype() == 'multipart':            continue        # is this part an attachment ?        if part.get('Content-Disposition') is None:            continue        filename = part.get_filename()        counter = 1        # if there is no filename, we create one with a counter to avoid duplicates        if not filename:            filename = 'part-%03d%s' % (counter, 'bin')            counter += 1        att_path = os.path.join(detach_dir, filename)        #Check if its already there        if not os.path.isfile(att_path) :            # finally write the stuff            fp = open(att_path, 'wb')            fp.write(part.get_payload(decode=True))            fp.close()

Wowww! That was something. ;-) But try the same in Java, just for fun!

By the way, I tested that in a shell, so some errors likely remain.

Enjoy

EDIT:

Because mail-box names can change from one country to another, I recommend doing m.list() and picking an item in it before m.select("the mailbox name") to avoid this error:

imaplib.error: command SEARCH illegal in state AUTH, only allowed in states SELECTED

I'm not an expert on Perl, but what I do know is that GMail supports IMAP and POP3, 2 protocols that are completely standard and allow you to do just that.

Maybe that helps you to get started.

#!/usr/bin/env python"""Save all attachments for given gmail account."""import os, sysfrom libgmail import GmailAccountga = GmailAccount("your.account@gmail.com", "pA$$w0Rd_")ga.login()# folders: inbox, starred, all, drafts, sent, spamfor thread in ga.getMessagesByFolder('all', allPages=True):    for msg in thread:        sys.stdout.write('.')        if msg.attachments:           print "\n", msg.id, msg.number, msg.subject, msg.sender           for att in msg.attachments:               if att.filename and att.content:                  attdir = os.path.join(thread.id, msg.id)                  if not os.path.isdir(attdir):                     os.makedirs(attdir)                                  with open(os.path.join(attdir, att.filename), 'wb') as f:                       f.write(att.content)

untested

1. Make sure TOS allows such scripts otherwise you account will be suspended
2. There might be better options: GMail offline mode, Thunderbird + ExtractExtensions, GmailFS, Gmail Drive, etc.