#11 Need way to manipulate a large number of messages at once

[Shlomi Fish]

Hi!

At the moment, one can only delete only one message at
the time. However, this is time consuming, and Google
will eventually block your HTTP requests.

The gmail.com HTTP interface allows to act on more than
one message at once. This was done (as an effect of my
request) in the Mail::Webmail::Gmail module:

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Mail-Webmail-Gmail/

Which is at the moment broken due to a change in the
gmail login semantics.

Please implement this feature, because there's one
label where I have over 8,000 messages that I'd like to
delete.

Regards,

Shlomi Fish

[Anonymous]

Logged In: YES
user_id=1136737

I created this script for this:

#!/usr/bin/env python
'''
delete_all.py -- Demo to delete all messages in folder
License: GPL 2.0
Copyright 2006 leogregianin@users.sourceforge.net
'''

import sys
from getpass import getpass
import libgmail

if __name__ == "__main__":
try:
name = sys.argv[1]
except IndexError:
name = raw_input("Gmail account name: ")

pw = getpass("Password: ")

ga = libgmail.GmailAccount(name, pw)

print "\nPlease wait, logging in..."

try:
ga.login()
except libgmail.GmailLoginFailure,e:
print "\nLogin failed. (%s)" % e.message
sys.exit(1)
else:
print "Login successful.\n"

FOLDER_list = raw_input('Choose a folder (inbox,
starred, all, drafts, sent, spam): ')
folder = ga.getMessagesByFolder(FOLDER_list)

choice = raw_input('\nDo you really delete all messages
in folder? [yes/no] ')
if choice in ['yes', 'y']:
for thread in folder:
print thread.id, len(thread), thread.subject,
'delete ok!\n'
ga.trashMessage(thread)
print '\nDelete all messages in folder sucessful!\n'

:P leonardo.

[Shlomi Fish]

Logged In: YES
user_id=35062
Originator: YES

Unfortunately this snippet still deletes one thread at a time, and would eventually be blocked by gmail. There's a way in gmail to delete multiple messages at a time - take a look at Mail::Webmail::Gmail (which has been fixed since my last report).

Note that now gmail has a UI option to select all messages in a label, including those that are not visible.

[Anonymous]

Logged In: YES
user_id=1136737
Originator: NO

replace this:
<< folder = ga.getMessagesByFolder(FOLDER_list)
for this:
>> folder = ga.getMessagesByFolder(FOLDER_list, allPages=True)

and, this:
<< ga.trashMessage(thread)
for this:
>> ga.trashThread(thread)

perhaps the gmail blocks you with little frequency ;P