pythongmail

Is there any way to use a string variable instead of an actual string in quotes for labelids in service.users().messages().list?


The users.messages.list method requires a string for the labelIds parameter. Is there any way to provide it a string other than entering 'the string'...I want to include this method as part of a for loop cycling through all user defined labels without knowing what they are in advance, but I get a 400 error An API error occurred: <HttpError 400 when requesting https://gmail.googleapis.com/gmail..... this is the format it likes... service.users().messages().list(userId='me',labelIds=['a string']).execute() here is what I want it to do...

 try:
    # Call the Gmail API
    service = build('gmail', 'v1', credentials=creds)
    results = service.users().labels().list(userId='me').execute()
    labels = results.get('labels', [])
    #labels is a list of all system and user defined labels
    #need to cycle through all user defined labels and store emails with 
    #each label
    for label in labels:
        if label['type']=='user':
            name = label['name']  #this is a 'string'
            results = service.users().messages().list(
                userId='me',
                labelIds=[name],
                maxResults=2  # Adjust as needed
            ).execute()
            break

Solution

  • I think you should use label['id'] rather than label['name']. Sometimes, these two have the same value; sometimes, they don't.

    Ref: https://developers.google.com/workspace/gmail/api/reference/rest/v1/users.messages/list#http-request

    for label in labels:
        if label['type'] == 'user':
            label_id = label['id']  # Use the label ID, not the name
            results = service.users().messages().list(
                userId='me',
                labelIds=[label_id],  # This works!
                maxResults=2
            ).execute()
    
            # Do something with results here
            print(f"Messages with label {label['name']}:", results.get('messages', []))
            break  # Remove break if you want to process all labels