filesystem based interface to interact with gmail

Note: intended for Linux distributions. Tested on Ubuntu 20.04

clone the repository with git clone git@github.com:lucastliu/gmailfs.git

Navigate to the repository on your computer cd gmailfs

install dependencies sudo pip3 --upgrade install -r requirements.txt

sudo pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Various credential details will need to be noted and later added to a configuration file throughout this process.

Create a Google account, which will give you a gmail email address to use.

Now we must give gmail permission to enable the API with our account.

Complete Step 1 in this tutorial to create a new project and enable the Gmail API. Take note of the project name and ID.

The Google cloud console is your place to add and modify features which will allow gmailfs to auto-update with your email contents.

Complete the first portion of this guide, Initial Cloud Pub/Sub Setup. Note the topic name and ID.

Create a service account with a Pub/Sub Admin role under the Credentials section of the APIs & Services in Google Cloud console. Generate a key for this service account. Download the json credentials, saving the file as project_key.json in the root directory of the gmailfs project.

In the same section, create a new OAuth client ID for a Desktop Application. Download the credentials, saving it as credentials.json, and place file into the root of the gmailfs project directory.

If you intend to have multiple instances of gmailfs with the same gmail account, you will need to complete the steps in this section for each new instance.

Create a new pull subscription to the topic established above for gmail updates. Note the name of the subscription.

Within the project root, create a new file named config.ini Fill the contents according to this template, replacing the your fields with your information:

[GMAIL]
topic = projects/your_project_full_ID_123/topics/your_topic_name
subname = your_subscription_name
projectid = your_project_ID_123

Run gmailfs with python3 ./gmailfs.py

The first time this program is run, you should be redirected to a browser to authenticate access permissions for this application. You should only need to do this once. A token.pickle file will be created for future accesses.

Because gmailfs runs in the foreground, we need to change to another terminal window. Open a new terminal window and again navigate to the gmailfs directory

It may be necessary to run your new terminal as an admin

sudo -i

[input your credentials]

View a list of available emails in the inbox cd client/inbox ls

You should see a list of directories, and they are named by subject and email id

Read the raw / full MIME content of a specific email cd email-subject-plus-email-id cat raw cat html

First, draft an email by creating a file in the root of the gmailfs repository

Example: vim emaildraftname start with the structure shown below. Note: You must have a newline after the messages line.

Subject: email example
To: whoever.it.is@duke.edu
File: /absolute/path/to/attachment/
Message:
first line,
second line
third line. 

To send the email, move the email draft to the ~/client/send directory mv emaildraftname ~client/send If the email is successfully sent, the email draft in the ~/client/send will be deleted and you can find the sent email in the ~/client/sent directory.

If the format of the draft is incorrect, the email draft will be deleted, and no action will be taken.

To check the email you just sent, change to the ~/client/sent directory cd /client/sent ls

To delete an email, cd inbox, rm -r email_folder_name

To stop the program, press ctrl-c one time in the terminal window which ran python3 ./gmailfs.py. Wait a few seconds.

After program termination, you can still view the contents under the ~/cache folder, but the contents will not update anymore.

1. python fuse sample: https://github.com/skorokithakis/python-fuse-sample