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This is a directory of program listings from Chapter 14 of the book:
- Foundations of Python Network Programming
-
Third Edition, October 2014
by Brandon Rhodes and John Goerzen
You can learn more about the book by visiting the root of this GitHub source code repository.
These scripts were written for Python 3, but can also run successfully under Python 2. Simply use 3to2 to convert them to the older syntax.
You should probably never use the scripts in this chapter, as the POP protocol is unreliable, poorly designed and implemented on servers, and should be abandoned in favor of IMAP. See the chapter for details.
The scripts in this chapter are best exercised inside the network
Playground where mail.example.com is
already set up and configured for POP. Once the playground is running,
ask for a prompt on the h1 host and visit this chapter’s directory:
$ ssh h1
# cd /fopnp/py3/chapter14
All of the scripts in this chapter are careful to use the POP3_SSL
class and therefore guarantee the use of TLS to protect the user’s
password and prevent other people in the same coffee shop from seeing
the user’s email. The popconn.py script simply connects and reports
the number of messages waiting:
$ python3 popconn.py mail.example.com brandon
Password: abc123
You have 6 messages totaling 3441 bytes
The apopconn.py script does exactly the same thing, but using a
variant of the standard authentication methods. The mailbox.py script
asks the server for a list of the messages that are waiting, and prints
a brief summary about each one.
$ python3 mailbox.py mail.example.com brandon
Password: abc123
Message 1 has 354 bytes
Message 2 has 442 bytes
Message 3 has 1175 bytes
Message 4 has 491 bytes
Message 5 has 490 bytes
Message 6 has 489 bytes
Finally, the download_and_delete.py script lets the user interactively
view each message and decide whether to ask the server to delete it.