Maildir - open latest email and reply to sender

I've configured postfix on the email server with .forward file which saves a copy of email and invokes a python script. These emails are stored in Maildir format.

I want to use this Python script to send a reply to the sender acknowledging that the email has been received. I was wondering if there is any way I can open/access that e-mail, get the header info and sender address and send email back.

I looked at several examples of Maildir functions of Python, but they mostly add/delete e-mails. How can I open the latest e-mail received in Maildir/new and get the required information?

The program I have so far:

md =  mailbox.Maildir('/home/abcd/Maildir')
message = md.iterkeys().next()
#print message
#for msg in md:
#    subject = msg.get('Subject',"")
#    print subject
print message
sender = message.get('From',"")
print sender

When I execute this, I do get the sender name. But It is rather the oldest email arrived in Maildir/new folder not the latest one.

Also, if I use get_date function, what if two (or more) e-mails arrive on the same day?

Some hints for this:

• You can open a Maildir with the mailbox.Maildir class (see the Documentation for mailbox)
• You can iterate over all the mails in a Maildir via the method itervalues
• Now you get all the mails in the Maildir. One of them is the most recent one.
• The mails are objects of the class MaildirMessage, which is a subclass of Message. For these classes, also a documentation exists (on the same page as mailbox, currently)
• With the method "get_date" on those objects, you can find out, which one is the most recent one. You still have to select it yourself.

So much as beginners help: A little bit you should also do by yourself.

You should make yourself familiar with the Python documentation - I agree, that it is not easy to find the right packages and how to use them, but you can try them directly in the Python shell.

Ok, here another code snippet:

newest = None
for message in md.itervalues():
   if newest == None or message.get_date() > newest.get_date():
      newest = message
# now newest should contain the newest message

Did not see your last question: get_date does not only contain the date, but also the time, because it gives the number of seconds since (normally) 1970.