Gmail API: how to fetch message body without attachments

Question

According to https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/v1/reference/users/messages/get

it seems choosing either 'full' and 'raw' formats are the options to obtain an email's body.

Is there a way to fetch email body, but not attachments?

Tholle Tholle · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-10T06:52:08

The format raw will give you everything in the mail (attachments included). The format full will however give you ids for attachments instead of the data, so full is the format you want to use.

Here is an example of how to get the body from a full format response:

var response = {
 "payload": {
  "parts": [
   {
    "mimeType": "multipart/alternative",
    "filename": "",
    "headers": [
     {
      "name": "Content-Type",
      "value": "multipart/alternative; boundary=001a1142e23c551e8e05200b4be0"
     }
    ],
    "body": {
     "size": 0
    },
    "parts": [
     {
      "partId": "0.0",
      "mimeType": "text/plain",
      "filename": "",
      "headers": [
       {
        "name": "Content-Type",
        "value": "text/plain; charset=UTF-8"
       }
      ],
      "body": {
       "size": 9,
       "data": "V293IG1hbg0K"
      }
     },
     {
      "partId": "0.1",
      "mimeType": "text/html",
      "filename": "",
      "headers": [
       {
        "name": "Content-Type",
        "value": "text/html; charset=UTF-8"
       }
      ],
      "body": {
       "size": 30,
       "data": "PGRpdiBkaXI9Imx0ciI-V293IG1hbjwvZGl2Pg0K"
      }
     }
    ]
   },
   {
    "partId": "1",
    "mimeType": "image/jpeg",
    "filename": "feelthebern.jpg",
    "headers": [
     {
      "name": "Content-Type",
      "value": "image/jpeg; name=\"feelthebern.jpg\""
     },
     {
      "name": "Content-Disposition",
      "value": "attachment; filename=\"feelthebern.jpg\""
     },
     {
      "name": "Content-Transfer-Encoding",
      "value": "base64"
     },
     {
      "name": "X-Attachment-Id",
      "value": "f_ieq3ev0i0"
     }
    ],
    "body": {
     "attachmentId": "ANGjdJ_2xG3WOiLh6MbUdYy4vo2VhV2kOso5AyuJW3333rbmk8BIE1GJHIOXkNIVGiphP3fGe7iuIl_MGzXBGNGvNslwlz8hOkvJZg2DaasVZsdVFT_5JGvJOLefgaSL4hqKJgtzOZG9K1XSMrRQAtz2V0NX7puPdXDU4gvalSuMRGwBhr_oDSfx2xljHEbGG6I4VLeLZfrzGGKW7BF-GO_FUxzJR8SizRYqIhgZNA6PfRGyOhf1s7bAPNW3M9KqWRgaK07WTOYl7DzW4hpNBPA4jrl7tgsssExHpfviFL7yL52lxsmbsiLe81Z5UoM",
     "size": 100446
    }
   }
  ]
 }
};

function decode(string) {
  return decodeURIComponent(escape(atob(string.replace(/\-/g, '+').replace(/\_/g, '/'))));
}

function getText(response) {
  var result = '';
  // In e.g. a plain text message, the payload is the only part.
  var parts = [response.payload];

  while (parts.length) {
    var part = parts.shift();
    if (part.parts) {
      parts = parts.concat(part.parts);
    }
    if (part.mimeType === 'text/plain') {
      // Continue to look for a 'text/html' part.
      result = decode(part.body.data);
    } else if (part.mimeType === 'text/html') {
      // 'text/html' part found. No need to continue.
      result = decode(part.body.data);
      break;
    }
  }
  
  return result;
}


var text = getText(response);
console.log(text);

Gmail API: how to fetch message body without attachments

1 Answers