Decoding emails in Python e.g. for GMail and imapclient lib

gistfile1.py

import email

def get_decoded_email_body(message_body):
    """ Decode email body.

    Detect character set if the header is not set.

    We try to get text/plain, but if there is not one then fallback to text/html.

    :param message_body: Raw 7-bit message body input e.g. from imaplib. Double encoded in quoted-printable and latin-1

    :return: Message body as unicode string
    """

    msg = email.message_from_string(message_body)

    text = ""
    if msg.is_multipart():
        html = None
        for part in msg.get_payload():

            print "%s, %s" % (part.get_content_type(), part.get_content_charset())

            if part.get_content_charset() is None:
                # We cannot know the character set, so return decoded "something"
                text = part.get_payload(decode=True)
                continue

            charset = part.get_content_charset()

            if part.get_content_type() == 'text/plain':
                text = unicode(part.get_payload(decode=True), str(charset), "ignore").encode('utf8', 'replace')

            if part.get_content_type() == 'text/html':
                html = unicode(part.get_payload(decode=True), str(charset), "ignore").encode('utf8', 'replace')

        if text is not None:
            return text.strip()
        else:
            return html.strip()
    else:
        text = unicode(msg.get_payload(decode=True), msg.get_content_charset(), 'ignore').encode('utf8', 'replace')
        return text.strip()

How can I decode email which I got using Gmail API? I am getting error "TypeError: initial_value must be str or None, not dict"

Saved someone from loosing all their hair. Thank you for this. Very useful!

Very Very Very useful..
Thank you

What up

This is super useful! Finally I find the solution here. Thank you sosososo much.

Signature image is not coming in text/html or text/plain both section , how to get it?

This is really helpful! Thanks a bunch! Here's couple tips for python 3 users who encountered type errors:

line 15: email.message_from_string --> email.message_from_bytes
line 32 &35: Unicode() --> str()

Gracias por el aporte :) ami me fue de ayuda