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Check your unread Gmail from the command line

Terminal - Check your unread Gmail from the command line
curl -u username --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | perl -ne 'print "\t" if /<name>/; print "$2\n" if /<(title|name)>(.*)<\/\1>/;'
2009-09-08 06:53:39
User: sitaram
Functions: perl
92
Up
Down
Check your unread Gmail from the command line

notice what happens when there is more than one unread message in a thread...

also people please dont hardcode the password when you use curl. Leave it out and curl will ask you when it runs. Please...?

Show sample output | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Alternatives

There are 6 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | sed -n "s/<title>\(.*\)<\/title.*name>\(.*\)<\/name>.*/\2 - \1/p"
2009-09-07 21:56:40
User: postrational
Functions: awk sed tr
Tags: Linux perl sed awk macosx curl rss gmail
41
Up
Down
Check your unread Gmail from the command line

Checks the Gmail ATOM feed for your account, parses it and outputs a list of unread messages.

For some reason sed gets stuck on OS X, so here's a Perl version for the Mac:

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*<name>(.*)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/'

If you want to see the name of the last person, who added a message to the conversation, change the greediness of the operators like this:

curl -u username:password --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | tr -d '\n' | awk -F '<entry>' '{for (i=2; i<=NF; i++) {print $i}}' | perl -pe 's/^<title>(.*)<\/title>.*?<name>(.*?)<\/name>.*$/$2 - $1/'
Show sample output | Comments (4) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
curl -u username --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | awk 'BEGIN{FS="\n";RS="(</entry>\n)?<entry>"}NR!=1{print "\033[1;31m"$9"\033[0;32m ("$10")\033[0m:\t\033[1;33m"$2"\033[0m"}' | sed -e 's,<[^>]*>,,g' | column -t -s $'\t'
2011-10-15 23:15:52
User: frntn
Functions: awk column sed
Tags: Linux sed awk column curl rss gmail
2
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Down
Check your unread Gmail from the command line

Just an alternative with more advanced formating for readability purpose. It now uses colors (too much for me but it's a kind of proof-of-concept), and adjust columns.

Show sample output | Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
curl -u username --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | perl -ne 'print "\t" if /<name>/; print "$2\n" if /<(title|name)>(.*)<\/\1>/;
2009-09-09 23:25:05
User: suxer
Functions: perl
-5
Up
Down
Checks your unread Gmail from the command line

notice what happens when there is more than one unread message in a thread...

also people please dont hardcode the password when you use curl. Leave it out and curl will ask you when it runs. Please...?

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

Please don't copy from others

Comment by suxer 193 weeks ago

If you have libwww-perl installed, you can use the decode_entities function from HTML::Entities. This will make HTML entities like  , ", etc. look prettier.

curl -u username --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | perl -MHTML::Entities -ne 'print "\t" if /<name>/; print decode_entities($2)."\n" if /<(title|name)>(.*)<\/\1>/;'
Comment by archtaku 81 weeks ago

LOL, and of course my comments show them as their decoded form. I am of course referring to the & nbsp; & quot;, etc. (I put a space between the ampersand and the rest of the entity.

Comment by archtaku 81 weeks ago

Your point of view

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