Fetch email and extract photos
Programming Snapshot – Go Mail Client
© Lead Image © Tatiana Venkova, 123RF.com
In this month's column, Mike Schilli writes a special mail client in Go and delves into the depths of the IMAP protocol in order to archive photos from incoming emails.
Popular email clients such as Thunderbird or Microsoft Outlook make it very easy to automatically filter and forward incoming messages. I recently had the idea of sending freshly taken photos to my account by email, from where my desktop computer would automatically retrieve them at regular intervals, extract the photos from the email body, and proceed to archive them (Figure 1). How difficult would it be to fetch emails from the provider with a DIY Go program and extract the photos embedded in MIME format in order to store them on my hard disk? Luckily, Go libraries make quick work of such problems!
Transport Logistics
In order for turnkey email clients to gain access to your choice of provider's mail server, they require three parameters: the IMAP server including the port, the username, and the password. Besides this, you are always asked for the SMTP server and port, possibly along with any other credentials you might have there. The reason for this is that two completely different technologies are used to collect and send email, and they usually run on different servers.
Protocols such as IMAP (or maybe POP3) check whether a user on the mail server has mail. To do this, the email client contacts the server and asks how many messages there are. The client can then either download the messages individually and store them in folders or even delete them.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
EndeavorOS Mercury Neo Available
A new release from the EndeavorOS team ships with Plasma 6.3 and other goodies.
-
Fedora 42 Beta Has Arrived
The Fedora Project has announced the availability of the first beta release for version 42 of the open-source distribution.
-
Dash to Panel Maintainer Quits
Charles Gagnon has stepped away as maintainer of the popular Dash to Panel Gnome extension.
-
CIQ Releases Security-Hardened Version of Rocky Linux
If you're looking for an enterprise-grade Linux distribution that is hardened for business use, there's a new version of Rocky Linux that's sure to make you and your company happy.
-
Gnome’s Dash to Panel Extension Gets a Massive Update
If you're a fan of the Gnome Dash to Panel extension, you'll be thrilled to hear that a new version has been released with a dock mode.
-
Blender App Makes it to the Big Screen
The animated film "Flow" won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards held on March 2, 2025 and Blender was a part of it.
-
Linux Mint Retools the Cinnamon App Launcher
The developers of Linux Mint are working on an improved Cinnamon App Launcher with a better, more accessible UI.
-
New Linux Tool for Security Issues
Seal Security is launching a new solution to automate fixing Linux vulnerabilities.
-
Ubuntu 25.04 Coming Soon
Ubuntu 25.04 (Plucky Puffin) has been given an April release date with many notable updates.
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.