node-gmail-api's Introduction

node-gmail-api

Node module to interact with the gmail api.

Why not the google official library? Well it does too much and doesn't implement batching. Which means fetching a bunch of email is insanely painful. This module exposes a function which will query the api searching for messages and hit the google batch api to fetch all the messages that are returned.

Authenticating users

To use this module, you'll need an oauth access token key. See more details here: https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/overview#auth_and_the_gmail_api.

You may use passport-google-oauth to get an access key for a user, then use this module to make requests on behalf of the authenticated user.

Example authentication call (cf. passport-google-oauth for more complete usage examples):

passport.use(new GoogleStrategy({
		clientID: config.googleApp.clientId
		, clientSecret: config.googleApp.clientSecret
		, userProfileURL: 'https://www.googleapis.com/oauth2/v3/userinfo'
		, callbackURL: config.baseurl + '/oauth2callback'
	}
	, function(accessToken, refreshToken, profile, done) {
		// do your thing here
	}
))

Example

Fetch latest 10 emails and show the snippet

// assuming access token has already been retrieved inside variable `accessToken`

var Gmail = require('node-gmail-api')
  , gmail = new Gmail(accessToken)
  , s = gmail.messages('label:inbox', {max: 10})

s.on('data', function (d) {
  console.log(d.snippet)
})

Optionally request the fields you want (for performance)

cf. gmail API performance guide.

var Gmail = require('node-gmail-api')
  , gmail = new Gmail(accessToken)
  , s = gmail.messages('label:inbox', { fields: ['id', 'internalDate', 'labelIds', 'payload']})

s.on('data', function (d) {
  console.log(d.id)
})

Optionally request the format you want (e.g full (default), raw, minimal, metadata)

var Gmail = require('node-gmail-api')
  , gmail = new Gmail(accessToken)
  , s = gmail.messages('label:inbox', {format: 'raw'})

s.on('data', function (d) {
  console.log(d.raw)
})