PyCall and email get_payload

General Usage
1

I am trying to decode email body using PyCall and email Python library. This works in Python:

>>> import email
>>> email_message = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
>>> email_message.get_payload(decode=True)

The problem in Julia is that email.message_from_string returns a Dict, so calling get_payload is not possible (none of the elements contain the body):

julia> email_message = email.message_from_string(data[1][2])
Dict{Any,Any} with 25 entries:
  "Subject"                    => "Rec...

So, is there a way to call get_payload(decode=True) from Julia?

2

PyCall.jl tries to automatically convert Python return types back to native Julia types. Since that’s not always what you want (as in this case) you can use the lower-level pycall function, which lets you specify the expected return type. Specifying a return type of PyObject avoids any automatic conversion:

using PyCall
@pyimport email
pymsg = pycall(email.message_from_string, PyObject, data[1][2])
pymsg[:get_payload](decode=true)

See: https://github.com/JuliaPy/PyCall.jl#calling-python

2 Likes
3

Because @pyimport works so well in general, it seems that I have overlooked pycall(), many thanks!