Detecting if an email is a “Delivery Status Notification” and extract information - Python

Question

I\'m using the Python email module to parse emails.

I need to be able to tell if an email is a \"Delivery Status Notification\", find out what the status is

Answer 1

The docs you cited says that the message is multi-part if it is DSN:

import email

msg = email.message_from_string(emailstr)

if (msg.is_multipart() and len(msg.get_payload()) > 1 and 
    msg.get_payload(1).get_content_type() == 'message/delivery-status'):
    # email is DSN
    print(msg.get_payload(0).get_payload()) # human-readable section

    for dsn in msg.get_payload(1).get_payload():
        print('action: %s' % dsn['action']) # e.g., "failed", "delivered"

    if len(msg.get_payload()) > 2:
        print(msg.get_payload(2)) # original message

Format of a Delivery Status Notification (from rfc 3464):

A DSN is a MIME message with a top-level content-type of
multipart/report (defined in [REPORT]).  When a multipart/report
content is used to transmit a DSN:

(a) The report-type parameter of the multipart/report content is
    "delivery-status".

(b) The first component of the multipart/report contains a human-
    readable explanation of the DSN, as described in [REPORT].

(c) The second component of the multipart/report is of content-type
    message/delivery-status, described in section 2.1 of this
    document.

(d) If the original message or a portion of the message is to be
    returned to the sender, it appears as the third component of the
    multipart/report.