Programmatic/script access to FetLife

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Programmatic/script access to Gmail.

Access to your Gmail using a script can be extremely useful, as it allows you to export data from it based on queries or parameters and manipulate the data freely. However, Gmail is highly secure, so this can be a little tricky. Here’s how it’s done.

1.       Download GIT and install it from https://git-scm.com/downloads

2.       Visit the GIT repository for the Gmail PowerShell extension to download and install it: https://github.com/nblagoev/Gmail.ps#install

3.       Open Windows “Credential manager” from the start menu

4.       Go to the Windows Credentials tab

5.       Click “Add a generic credential”

6.       Add your Gmail account credentials

7.       Open a PowerShell admin window

8.       Install the PowerShell Credential Manager:

9.       Install-Module -Name CredentialManager  -AllowClobber -Force -Verbose -Scope AllUsers

10.   Get your own “App Password”, which is a unique character string that Google generates for your account. This article shows the steps: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833

11.   Use the following code to auth to Gmail in the PowerShell window:

$Gmailcred = Get-Credential     

(Then select your Gmail account, and type in the app password you obtained in step 9)

1.       This creates a Gmail session you can work-against:

$Gmail = New-GmailSession -Credential $Gmailcred

1.       Use the following loop to retrieve messages and dump them into a text file. You can use various other filters to create your query, such as a date/time range, subject keywords, whatever you want. This example is for emails received from a specific contact:

$messages = $inbox | Get-Message $Gmail -From "joe@cnn.com" | Receive-Message

$File   = 'c:\temp\DownloadedMessages.txt'

$Stream = [System.IO.StreamWriter]::new($File)

foreach ($msg in $messages) {

$Stream.WriteLine($msg.Body)

}

The resulting file is a flat text with the full body of the messages, which you can then parse using any other script you like, or just archive for whatever purpose. You can also use other options instead of $msg.Body, like $msg.subject, if you just want to list the subjects. You can also substitute the $StreamWriteLine with some other commands to process the messages as they are read by PowerShell. For example, you might prefer to create an individual file from each message, or fish-out specific pieces of text from the messages. There’s no limit to what you might do.