Mail API Library to use with RF for automating checking of emails.

[Smi Kam]

I need to create some test cases in which I have to automate the following-

1. log into an email account

2. Locate a specific email 

3.Click on the confirmation link in the body of the email.

I was wondering if there's any Mail API library that I could import and use with Robot Framework. Any inputs will be highly appreciated!

[Matt Wanless]

I had a similar issue, and did it all in Python using POP3 (poplib). I didn't need any links, but they can easily be pulled out of the email body and returned for robot to open them.

Sample code using gmail as the email account:

import poplib

import email 

def get_emails_for_account(email_address):

    

    messages_wot_we_want = {}

    user = 'recent:em...@gmail.com' 

    popconnection = poplib.POP3_SSL('pop.googlemail.com', '995') 

    popconnection.user(user) 

    popconnection.pass_('password') 

    

    # Find out how many messages are waiting 

    numMessages = len(popconnection.list()[1]) 

    

    # Iterate through the messages 

    for i in range(numMessages): 

        

        # retr will be called three times for each email message in the j loop below. 

        # 

        # The first call will return a string telling you how many bytes (i.e., octets) 

        # are in the message. The string will look like this: OK <byte count> octets 

        # (where <byte count> is the total number of bytes in the message). 

        # 

        # The second call will return a list containing the elements of the message. 

        # 

        # The third call will return an integer containing the total number of 

        # bytes in the message 

        

        for j in popconnection.retr(i+1): 

        

        # We are interested only in the contents of the list. And we need to put the 

        # list contents into a string, because that is what message_from_string expects. 

        # We must also be sure to put a line break at the end of the substring that 

        # represents each list element, as message_from_string relies on line breaks 

        # to parse the email message. The k loop below builds the string from the list. 

            if type(j) == list: 

                numElements = len(j) 

                outString = "" 

                for k in range(numElements): 

                    outString += j[k] 

                    outString += '\n' 

                #if email.

                message = email.message_from_string(outString) 

        

        # Now that we have got the contents of the email into an email object, we can 

        # access the logical elements of the email at will, in any order. The call to 

        # get_payload() is to retrieve the body of the message. 

        #print message['Subject'] 

        #print message['From'] 

        if message['To'] == email_address:

            messages_wot_we_want[message['Date']] = message

            

        #print message.get_payload()

        

        

    

    # Strictly speaking, all we need to do on quitting is to disconnect, but in some 

    # applications it would be a good idea to delete the email from the server. 

    popconnection.quit() 

    

    return messages_wot_we_want

def get_email_information(email_address, type_of_email):

    """ method to look up emails for the named account, and using the type of email, return

    the information in the email."""

    emails = get_emails_for_account(email_address)

    

    # this is a dictionary of emails, with the email datetime as the key.

    

    email_types = { "welcome" : "You are so in the know",  

                    "password_reset" : "Shhh! Your password",

                    "order" : "order",

                    "order_cancellation" : "cancel",

                    "returns" : "return",

                    }

    # now sort and filter the old messages

    

    message_order = emails.keys()

    message_order.sort()

    message_order.reverse()

    

    # we now have the messages in reverse order so we process the latest one first.

    

    for key in message_order:

        

        message = emails[key]

        

        if email_types[type_of_email] == message['subject']:

            if message['subject'] == "You are so in the know":

                # welcome email, ignore it.

                return "confirmed"

                

            if message['subject'] == "Shhh! Your password":

                # password reset

                email_body = message.get_payload()

                # chop the password out of the message body

                password = email_body.split('We have a temporary password for you as requested: ')[1].splitlines()[0].strip()

                return password

                

                

Hope that helps get you started

Matt

[Michał Robaszewski]

if some one is still looking for some easy way to reach your email There is a Imap Library https://github.com/lovelysystems/robotframework-imaplibrary