How can I print a summary of Maildir contents when logging into a shell?

Question

I know this is theoretically possible, but I'm trying to avoid reinventing the wheel.

I'm using Ubuntu Linux, with Maildir mailbox format. I want to put something in my .login that will parse the ~/Maildir contents and display a summary of my unread email messages.

I'm running Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail), and I use mutt for my email client, and I'm using Postfix and dovecot for SMTP and MDA/IMAP.

Is there something already written that will do this? Or will I need to write something myself using Perl and Mail::Box::Maildir? It seems like this would be a common thing, but for the life of me I can't find a package or utility that will do what I'm looking for.

Answer 1

I found a shorter and simpler way to implement with Python.

Sample code below.

#!/usr/bin/python

import mailbox
import email.utils
import os

mbox = mailbox.Maildir(os.environ['HOME'] + "/Maildir" )
mbox.lock()
spam = mbox.get_folder('INBOX.junk')
print "INBOX:"
for message in mbox:
    print "- [%s] %s:  \"%s\"" % ( message['date'], message['from'], message['subject'] )
print
print "SPAM messages:"
for message in spam:
    print "- [%s] %s:  \"%s\"" % ( message['date'], message['from'], message['subject'] )

mbox.close()

Answer 2

Here's what I came up with...a home-grown Perl script using the Mail::Box::Maildir CPAN module.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use Mail::Box::Maildir;

my $folder = new Mail::Box::Maildir folder=>"$ENV{HOME}/Maildir";

my $message;
my $messsages;
my $to;
my $from;
my $date;
my $subject;

print "********************************************************************************\n";
foreach $message( $folder->messages('ALL') ) {
    #print $message->{'MM_head'}, "\n";
    parse_header( $message->{'MM_head'} );
    print "   Date:  $date\n";
    print "   From:  $from\n";
    print "     To:  $to\n";
    print "Subject:  $subject\n";
    print "********************************************************************************\n";
}

exit 0;

sub parse_header {
    my @lines = split( /\n/, shift(@_) );
    undef $to;
    undef $from;
    undef $date;
    undef $subject;

    foreach ( @lines ) {
        if ( /^To:\s+?(.*)$/ ) {
            $to = $1;
        }
        elsif ( /^From:\s+?(.*)$/ ) {
            $from = $1;
        }
        elsif ( /^Date:\s+?(.*)$/ ) {
            $date = $1;
        }
        elsif ( /^Subject:\s+?(.*)$/ ) {
            $subject = $1;
        }
    }
}