How to open an email message using applescript?

Question

Hi Everyone,

I am writing a small applescript which retrieves all "unread" messages in the viewer and loops them.

I have two goals to complete:

1. I need to get the subject of each message and perform a regular expression to see if it's suitable for step 2 (ex: get emails with subject {.*})

2. I need to open each message on a separate window and after 4 seconds, I need to close that window and proceed with the next message

Do you know how to do these?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The following applescript works for me, but I'm not sure how to do the regex matching. You can use the unix 'grep' function with applescript's 'do shell script' command, but I'm no expert in how to use grep properly. I'll leave that for someone else to answer.

on run
    tell application "Mail"
        set myInbox to mailbox "INBOX" of account 1
        set myMessages to every message of myInbox

        repeat with theMessage in myMessages
            if read status of theMessage is false then

                if my subjectIsInteresting(subject of theMessage) then
                    open theMessage
                    delay 4
                    close window 1
                end if

            end if
        end repeat

    end tell
end run

on subjectIsInteresting(subject)

    -- do some regex magic here

    return true -- for now

end subjectIsInteresting

Answer 2

For regexes -- If you're running the script on your own machine, or can distribute it bundled, you could use Satimage's Smile extension (http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/downloads/index.html) which adds regexes to Applescript.

Answer 3

I know you already have your answer but have you looked into Automator? For most standard scripts such as this, it can be less painful if you aren't too familiar with AppleScript. It's not very 'programmy' but it's quick and you'll spend less time debugging.