mail-parser-reply

1.36 · active · verified Thu Apr 16

mail-parser-reply is a Python library (current version 1.36) designed to parse and split incoming email messages into individual replies. It supports multiple languages and makes it easier to extract relevant text content, with options to strip headers, signatures, and disclaimers. The library is actively maintained, providing an improved, fully type-annotated implementation over older email reply parsing tools.

Common errors

```
TypeError: EmailReplyParser() missing 1 required positional argument: 'languages'
```
cause The `EmailReplyParser` class requires the `languages` argument during instantiation.

fix Instantiate `EmailReplyParser` by providing a list of language codes, e.g., `EmailReplyParser(languages=['en'])`.
```
AttributeError: 'EmailReplyParser' object has no attribute 'replies' (or 'parse_reply')
```
cause Methods like `read()` and `parse_reply()` are instance methods and must be called on an instantiated `EmailReplyParser` object, not directly on the class.

fix First, create an instance: `parser = EmailReplyParser(languages=['en'])`. Then, call the methods on the instance: `email_message = parser.read(text=mail_body)`.

Warnings

gotcha Mail clients handle reply formatting in diverse ways, which can make consistent and reliable parsing inherently challenging. The library is designed to mitigate this but edge cases may still exist.
Fix: Thoroughly test with various email formats specific to your use case. Consider pre-processing inconsistent inputs if issues arise.
gotcha Some supported languages (e.g., Czech, Spanish, Korean, Chinese) are explicitly marked as 'untested' in the documentation. Parsing accuracy for these languages may be less reliable than for thoroughly tested ones.
Fix: If using an untested language, perform extensive testing to verify parsing quality. Contributions for improving these languages are welcome by the maintainers.
gotcha The library primarily focuses on 'text-based mail parsing'. While it can handle headers and signatures, complex HTML-rich emails might require prior conversion to plain text for optimal and accurate reply extraction.
Fix: For HTML emails, ensure they are converted to a plain text representation before feeding them to the `EmailReplyParser` for best results.

Install

pip install mail-parser-reply Install latest version

Imports

EmailReplyParser
wrong:
```
from mail_parser_reply import EmailReplyParser
```
correct:
```
from mailparser_reply import EmailReplyParser
```
Python package names often use hyphens, but import paths typically use underscores. The correct import module name is `mailparser_reply`.

Quickstart

This quickstart demonstrates how to instantiate `EmailReplyParser` with a list of languages and then use `read()` to get all parsed replies or `parse_reply()` to extract only the most recent reply from a given email body text.

from mailparser_reply import EmailReplyParser

mail_body = """Awesome! I haven't had another problem with it. Thanks, alfonsrv

On Wed, Dec 20, 2023 at 13:37, RAUSYS <info@rausys.de> wrote:
> The good news is that I've found a much better query for lastLocation.
> It should run much faster now. Can you double-check?
"""

# Instantiate the parser with desired languages
parser = EmailReplyParser(languages=['en', 'de'])

# Parse the entire email and get a list of EmailReply objects
email_message = parser.read(text=mail_body)
print("All replies:")
for reply in email_message.replies:
    print(f"- {reply.text}")

# Or get only the latest reply as a string
latest_reply = parser.parse_reply(text=mail_body)
print("\nLatest reply:")
print(latest_reply)

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