Here's an example email header,
header = """
From: Media Temple user (mt.kb.user@gmail.com)
Subject: article: A sample header
Date: January 25, 2011 3:30:58 PM PDT
To: user@example.com
Return-Path: <mt.kb.user@gmail.com>
Envelope-To: user@example.com
Delivery-Date: Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:31:01 -0700
Received: from :po-out-1718.google.com ([72.14.252.155]:54907) by cl35.gs01.gridserver.com with esmtp (Exim 4.63) (envelope-from <mt.kb.user@gmail.com>) id 1KDoNH-0000f0-RL for user@example.com; Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:31:01 -0700
Dkim-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:to :subject:mime-version:content-type; bh=+JqkmVt+sHDFIGX5jKp3oP18LQf10VQjAmZAKl1lspY=; b=F87jySDZnMayyitVxLdHcQNL073DytKRyrRh84GNsI24IRNakn0oOfrC2luliNvdea LGTk3adIrzt+N96GyMseWz8T9xE6O/sAI16db48q4Iqkd7uOiDvFsvS3CUQlNhybNw8m CH/o8eELTN0zbSbn5Trp0dkRYXhMX8FTAwrH0=
Domainkey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type; b=wkbBj0M8NCUlboI6idKooejg0sL2ms7fDPe1tHUkR9Ht0qr5lAJX4q9PMVJeyjWalH 36n4qGLtC2euBJY070bVra8IBB9FeDEW9C35BC1vuPT5XyucCm0hulbE86+uiUTXCkaB 6ykquzQGCer7xPAcMJqVfXDkHo3H61HM9oCQM=
Message-Id: <c8f49cec0807011530k11196ad4p7cb4b9420f2ae752@mail.gmail.com>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_Part_3927_12044027.1214951458678"
X-Spam-Status: score=3.7 tests=DNS_FROM_RFC_POST, HTML_00_10, HTML_MESSAGE, HTML_SHORT_LENGTH version=3.1.7
X-Spam-Level: ***
Message Body: **The email message body**
"""
The header is stored as a string, how do I parse this header, so that i can map it to a dictionary as the header fields be the key and the values be the values in the dictionary?
I want a dictionary like this,
header_dict = {
'From': 'Media Temple user (mt.kb.user@gmail.com)',
'Subject': article: 'A sample header',
'Date': 'January 25, 2011 3:30:58 PM PDT'
'and so on': .. . . . .. . . .. .
. . . . .. . . . .. . . . . .
}
I made a list of fields required,
header_reqd = ['From:','Subject:','Date:','To:','Return-Path:','Envelope-To:','Delivery-Date:','Received:','Dkim-Signature:','Domainkey-Signature:','Message-Id:','Mime-Version:','Content-Type:','X-Spam-Status:','X-Spam-Level:','Message Body:']
This can list items can likely be the keys for the dictionary.
It seems most of these answers have overlooked the Python email parser and the output results are not correct with prefix spaces in the values. Also the OP has perhaps made a typo by including a preceding newline in the header string which requires stripped for the email parser to work.
from email.parser import HeaderParser
header = header.strip() # Fix incorrect formatting
email_message = HeaderParser().parsestr(header)
dict(email_message)
Output (truncated):
>>> from pprint import pprint
>>> pprint(dict(email_message))
{'Content-Type': 'multipart/alternative; '
'boundary="----=_Part_3927_12044027.1214951458678"',
'Date': 'January 25, 2011 3:30:58 PM PDT',
'Delivery-Date': 'Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:31:01 -0700',
...
'Subject': 'article: A sample header',
'To': 'user@example.com',
'X-Spam-Level': '***',
'X-Spam-Status': 'score=3.7 tests=DNS_FROM_RFC_POST, HTML_00_10, '
'HTML_MESSAGE, HTML_SHORT_LENGTH version=3.1.7'}
Be aware that email message headers can contain duplicate keys as mentioned in the Python documentation for email.message
Headers are stored and returned in case-preserving form, but field names are matched case-insensitively. Unlike a real dict, there is an ordering to the keys, and there can be duplicate keys. Additional methods are provided for working with headers that have duplicate keys.
For example converting the following email message to a Python dict only the first Received key would be retained.
headers = HeaderParser().parsestr("""Received: by mx0047p1mdw1.sendgrid.net with SMTP id 6WCVv7KAWn Wed, 27 Jul 2016 20:53:06 +0000 (UTC)
Received: from mail-io0-f169.google.com (mail-io0-f169.google.com [209.85.223.169]) by mx0047p1mdw1.sendgrid.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id AA9FFA817F2 for <example@example.comom>; Wed, 27 Jul 2016 20:53:06 +0000 (UTC)
Received: by mail-io0-f169.google.com with SMTP id b62so81593819iod.3 for <example@example.comom>; Wed, 27 Jul 2016 13:53:06 -0700 (PDT)""")
dict(headers)
{'Received': 'by mx0047p1mdw1.sendgrid.net with SMTP id 6WCVv7KAWn Wed, 27 Jul 2016 20:53:06 +0000 (UTC)'}
Use the get_all method to check for duplicates:
headers.get_all('Received')
['by mx0047p1mdw1.sendgrid.net with SMTP id 6WCVv7KAWn Wed, 27 Jul 2016 20:53:06 +0000 (UTC)', 'from mail-io0-f169.google.com (mail-io0-f169.google.com [209.85.223.169]) by mx0047p1mdw1.sendgrid.net (Postfix) with ESMTPS id AA9FFA817F2 for <example@example.comom>; Wed, 27 Jul 2016 20:53:06 +0000 (UTC)', 'by mail-io0-f169.google.com with SMTP id b62so81593819iod.3 for <example@example.comom>; Wed, 27 Jul 2016 13:53:06 -0700 (PDT)']