A Rubyesque interface to Google's Gmail, with all the tools you'll need. Search, read and send multipart emails, archive, mark as read/unread, delete emails, and manage labels.

It's based on Daniel Parker's ruby-gmail gem. This version has more friendly API, is well tested, better documented and have many other improvements.

Installation

You can install it easy using rubygems:

sudo gem install gmail

Or install it manually:

git clone git://github.com/gmailgem/gmail.git
cd gmail
rake install

gmail gem has the following dependencies (with Bundler all will be installed automatically):

• mail
• gmail_xoauth

Version Support

• Ruby 2.0.0+ is supported
• Ruby 1.9.3 is supported but deprecated and is planned to be dropped from gmail v0.6.0
• Ruby 1.8.7 users should use gmail v0.4.1

Features

• Search emails
• Read emails (handles attachments)
• Emails: label, archive, delete, mark as read/unread/spam, star
• Manage labels
• Create and send multipart email messages in plaintext and/or html, with inline images and attachments
• Utilizes Gmail's IMAP & SMTP, MIME-type detection and parses and generates MIME properly.

Basic usage

First of all require the gmail library.

require 'gmail'

Authenticating gmail sessions

This will let you automatically log in to your account.

gmail = Gmail.connect(username, password)
# play with your gmail...
gmail.logout

If you pass a block, the session will be passed into the block, and the session will be logged out after the block is executed.

Gmail.connect(username, password) do |gmail|
  # play with your gmail...
end

Examples above are "quiet", it means that it will not raise any errors when session couldn't be started (eg. because of connection error or invalid authorization data). You can use connection which handles errors raising:

Gmail.connect!(username, password)
Gmail.connect!(username, password) {|gmail| ... play with gmail ... }

You can also check if you are logged in at any time:

Gmail.connect(username, password) do |gmail|
  gmail.logged_in?
end

XOAuth authentication

From v0.4.0 it's possible to authenticate with your Gmail account using XOAuth method. It's very simple:

gmail = Gmail.connect(:xoauth, "email@domain.com", 
  :token           => 'TOKEN',
  :secret          => 'TOKEN_SECRET',
  :consumer_key    => 'CONSUMER_KEY',
  :consumer_secret => 'CONSUMER_SECRET'
)

For more information check out the gmail_xoauth gem from Nicolas Fouché.

Counting and gathering emails

Get counts for messages in the inbox:

gmail.inbox.count
gmail.inbox.count(:unread)
gmail.inbox.count(:read)

Count with some criteria:

gmail.inbox.count(:after => Date.parse("2010-02-20"), :before => Date.parse("2010-03-20"))
gmail.inbox.count(:on => Date.parse("2010-04-15"))
gmail.inbox.count(:from => "myfriend@gmail.com")
gmail.inbox.count(:to => "directlytome@gmail.com")

Combine flags and options:

gmail.inbox.count(:unread, :from => "myboss@gmail.com")

Browsing labeled emails is similar to work with inbox.

gmail.mailbox('Urgent').count

Getting messages works the same way as counting: Remember that every message in a conversation/thread will come as a separate message.

gmail.inbox.emails(:unread, :before => Date.parse("2010-04-20"), :from => "myboss@gmail.com")

The gm option enables use of the Gmail search syntax.

gmail.inbox.emails(gm: '"testing"')

You can use also one of aliases:

gmail.inbox.find(...)
gmail.inbox.search(...)
gmail.inbox.mails(...)

Also you can manipulate each message using block style:

gmail.inbox.find(:unread).each do |email|
  email.read!
end

Working with emails!

Any news older than 4-20, mark as read and archive it:

gmail.inbox.find(:before => Date.parse("2010-04-20"), :from => "news@nbcnews.com").each do |email|
  email.read! # can also unread!, spam! or star!
  email.archive!
end

Delete emails from X:

gmail.inbox.find(:from => "x-fiance@gmail.com").each do |email|
  email.delete!
end

Save all attachments in the "Faxes" label to a local folder (uses functionality from Mail gem):

folder = Dir.pwd # for example
gmail.mailbox("Faxes").emails.each do |email|
  email.message.attachments.each do |f|
    File.write(File.join(folder, f.filename), f.body.decoded)
  end
end

You can use also #label method instead of #mailbox:

gmail.label("Faxes").emails {|email| ... }

Save just the first attachment from the newest unread email (assuming pdf):

email = gmail.inbox.find(:unread).first
email.attachments[0].save_to_file("/path/to/location")

Add a label to a message:

email.label("Faxes")

Example above will raise error when you don't have the Faxes label. You can avoid this using:

email.label!("Faxes") # The `Faxes` label will be automatically created now

You can also move message to a label/mailbox:

email.move_to("Faxes")
email.move_to!("NewLabel")

There is also few shortcuts to mark messages quickly:

email.read!
email.unread!
email.spam!
email.star!
email.unstar!

Managing labels

With Gmail gem you can also manage your labels. You can get list of defined labels:

gmail.labels.all

Create new label:

gmail.labels.new("Urgent")
gmail.labels.add("AnotherOne")

Remove labels:

gmail.labels.delete("Urgent")

Or check if given label exists:

gmail.labels.exists?("Urgent")     # => false
gmail.labels.exists?("AnotherOne") # => true

Localize label names using the LIST special-use extension flags, :Inbox, :All, :Drafts, :Sent, :Trash, :Important, :Junk, and :Flagged

gmail.labels.localize(:all) # => "[Gmail]\All Mail"
                            # => "[Google Mail]\All Mail"

Composing and sending emails

Creating emails now uses the amazing Mail rubygem. See its documentation here. The Ruby Gmail will automatically configure your Mail emails to be sent via your Gmail account's SMTP, so they will be in your Gmail's "Sent" folder. Also, no need to specify the "From" email either, because ruby-gmail will set it for you.

gmail.deliver do
  to "email@example.com"
  subject "Having fun in Puerto Rico!"
  text_part do
    body "Text of plaintext message."
  end
  html_part do
    content_type 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
    body "<p>Text of <em>html</em> message.</p>"
  end
  add_file "/path/to/some_image.jpg"
end

Or, compose the message first and send it later

email = gmail.compose do
  to "email@example.com"
  subject "Having fun in Puerto Rico!"
  body "Spent the day on the road..."
end
email.deliver! # or: gmail.deliver(email)

Troubleshooting

If you are having trouble connecting to Gmail:

• Please ensure your account is verified
• In Gmail Security Settings, enable access for less secure applications.
• Read this support answer re: suspicious activity and try things like entering a captcha.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

• Fork the project.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Authors

Core Team

This project follows on Open Governance model. The Core Team is responsible for technical guidance, reviewing/merging PRs, and releases.

• Jeff Carbonella - @jcarbo
• Johnny Shields - @johnnyshields
• Alexandre Loureiro Solleiro - @webcracy
• Justin Grevich - @jgrevich
• @bootstraponline
• Nathan Herald - @myobie

Legacy Contributors

• Kriss Kowalik - @nu7hatch
• Daniel Parker - @dcparker
• Refer to CHANGELOG for individual contributions

Copyright

• Copyright (c) 2015 GmailGem team
• Copyright (c) 2010-2014 Kriss 'nu7hatch' Kowalik
• Copyright (c) 2009-2010 BehindLogic

Licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.