IMAPCleanse
Rubyforge Project:
rubyforge.org/projects/seattlerb/
Documentation:
seattlerb.rubyforge.org/IMAPCleanse/
About
IMAPCleanse removes old, read, unflagged messages from my IMAP mailboxes.
IMAPFlag flags messages I find interesting so I don't have to!
Both these tools can do this for you, too!
Why?
I’m lazy. I don’t delete read messages from my mailboxes because I like to have context when reading threads. Since I’m lazy my more-trafficed mailboxes can end up with tens of thousands of read messages. Deleting this many messages with Mail.app is time consuming and boring.
So I wrote imap_cleanse to clean out my old mailboxes for me. If I want to keep a message around for forever I’ll just flag it and imap_cleanse won’t touch it.
imap_cleanse eventually became known as Part One of my Plan for Total Email Domination.
Next up I decided to automatically flag messages that were interesting. (Part Two of my Plan for Total Email Domination.) I defined interesting as messages I responded to, messages I wrote (naturally!) and messages in response to messages I wrote.
Part Three of my Plan for Total Email Domination is awaiting more flagged messages.
Installing IMAPCleanse
Just install the gem:
$ sudo gem install IMAPCleanse
Using imap_cleanse
In short:
imap_cleanse -H mail.example.com -p mypassword -b Lists/FreeBSD/current,Lists/Ruby -a 30
The help for imap_cleanse should be sufficiently verbose, but here’s a couple of tips:
–noop and –verbose
The –noop flag tells imap_cleanse not to delete anything. When combined with the –verbose flag you can see how many messages imap_cleanse would have deleted from which mailboxes.
$ ruby -Ilib bin/imap_cleanse -nv
# Connected to mail.example.com:993
# Logged in as drbrain
# Cleansing read, unflagged messages older than 26-Feb-2006 17:04 PST
# Found 23 mailboxes to cleanse:
# mail/Lists/FreeBSD/current
[...]
# mail/Lists/Ruby/ZineBoard
# Selected mail/Lists/FreeBSD/current
# Scanning for messages
# Found 0 messages
[...]
# Selected mail/Lists/Ruby/ZineBoard
# Scanning for messages
# Found 0 messages
# Done. Found 0 messages in 23 mailboxes
(Since I just ran imap_cleanse it didn’t have anything to do.)
~/.imap_cleanse
The ~/.imap_cleanse file can hold your password and other options so you don’t have to type them in on the command line every time. The format is simple, just the option name followed by ‘=’ followed by the argument. (Check -v for option names.)
No whitespace is stripped from options, so be sure to do that yourself. Mine looks something like this:
Host=mail.example.com
SSL=true
Username=drbrain
Boxes=Lists/FreeBSD/current,Lists/FreeBSD/performance,Lists/FreeBSD/Soekris,Lists/FreeBSD/stable,Lists/Ruby
Age=30
Password=my password
Email=drbrain@segment7.net
Using imap_flag
In short:
imap_flag -H mail.example.com -p mypassword -b Lists/FreeBSD/current,Lists/Ruby -e [email protected]
The help for imap_flag should be sufficiently verbose and the tips are the same as those for imap_cleanse. (imap_flag even reads ~/.imap_cleanse, so you can shove that extra Email option right in there!)
Bugs
Yeah, there probably is one, or maybe even three. Report them here: