Getting the right 'Date' of the Last Email Sent to the Contact

Question

So I am successful in getting the date for the last email received from the contact in the code below.

Now I am trying to get the date for the last email sent to the contact. As a beginner to the coding/python, I am not able to get it right. I tried to change 'From' to 'To' but it wasn't giving me the right date.

Any idea how should I proceed with this? I have tried looking around and didn't find a solution.

import email
from imapclient import IMAPClient
from datetime import timedelta, date, datetime


HOST = 'imap.gmail.com'
USERNAME = 'username'
PASSWORD = 'password'
ssl = True

## Connect, login and select the INBOX
server = IMAPClient(HOST, use_uid=True, ssl=ssl)
server.login(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
select_info = server.select_folder('INBOX') 

since_date = date(2016, 1, 1)    

##Search Inbox
messages = server.search(['FROM', '[email protected]', 'Since', since_date])
response = server.fetch(messages, ['RFC822'])
last_msg_id = list(response.keys())[-1] 
data = response[last_msg_id]
msg_string = data[b'RFC822']
msg = email.message_from_string(msg_string.decode())
print('ID %d: From: %s Date: %s' % (last_msg_id , msg['From'], msg['date']))

Jeffrey Kilelo Jeffrey Kilelo · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-10T21:20:43

The reason you are not getting the right date is because the list is unordered. In order to guarantee that you are getting the right one, you need to first sort it.

Try this quick step-by-step solution coded in a friendly style for newbies:

# Getting your response keys
response_keys='cabd' 

# Your response keys converted into list
msg_ids = list(response_keys) 
print(msg_ids) # result: ['c', 'a', 'b', 'd']

# Here your are sorting the list in place using built-in sort function
# The syntax is: list.sort(reverse=True|False) and the default is True
msg_ids.sort() 
print(msg_ids) # result: ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']

# Finally, grab the last item in the list
last_msg_id = msg_ids[-1] 
print(last_msg_id ) # result: d

Getting the right 'Date' of the Last Email Sent to the Contact

2 Answers