E-Mail client in linux which allows to search encrypted mail

I just saw the other response and guess I never wrote up the solution I actually implemented. It turns out that python imaplib is straightforward and I wrote a very quick script. Barring a few changes (e.g., anonymizing my various USERNAMEs, EMAILPASSWORD, WORKDOMAINNAME, MYGPGKEYID). I also don't just send encrypted it; but prepend the subject with the username of the sender and put some of the header stuff before the GPG (in case I'm reading it on my phone and can't decrypt).

#!/usr/bin/python

import imaplib
import email
from datetime import datetime,timedelta
import shelve
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

def piped_call(command1, arg1_list, command2, arg2_list):
    """
    if arg1_tuple = (a10, a11, a12); arg2_tuple is (a20, a21)    
    This executes "command1 a10 a11 a12 | command2 a20 a21 a22"
    """
    if type(arg1_list) not in (list, tuple):
        arg1_list = [arg1_list,]
    if type(arg2_list) not in (list, tuple):
        arg2_list = [arg2_list,]
    p1 = Popen([command1,]+list(arg1_list), stdout=PIPE)
    p2 = Popen([command2,]+list(arg2_list), stdin=p1.stdout, stdout=PIPE)
    p1.stdout.close()
    return p2.communicate()[0]

shlf = shelve.open('/home/USERNAME/mail/mail.shlf')
# This shelf (a persistent python dictionary written to file) has as its key 
# the IMAP message ids of all emails that have been processed by this script.
# Every time the script runs, I fetch all emails from the current day
# (except from midnight to 1am, where I fetch all emails since yesterday)
# and then send all emails that haven't been sent previously 
# by checking message ids against the python shelf.

M = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(host='imap.WORKDOMAINNAME.com', port=993)
M.login('EMAILUSERNAME', 'EMAILPASSWORD')
M.select()
dt = datetime.now() - timedelta(0,5*60*60) 
# Only search for messages since the day of an hour earlier.  
# This way messages from yesterday don't get lost at midnight; as well as limiting the number of messages to process through to just todays.    
typ, uid_data = M.uid('search', None, '(SINCE %s)' % dt.strftime('%d-%b-%Y'))

for num in uid_data[0].split():
    typ, data = M.uid('fetch', num, '(RFC822)')
    e = email.message_from_string(data[0][1])
    print 'Message %s\n%s\n' % (num, e['subject'])
    if num not in shlf:
        sender_email = e['return-path']
        for s in ('<', '>', '@WORKDOMAINNAME.com'):
            sender_email = sender_email.replace(s,'')
        subject = "%s: %s" % (sender_email, e['Subject'])
        body = ("From: %s\n"
                "To: %s\n"
                "Cc: %s\n"
                "Subject: %s\n\n" % (e['From'], e['To'], e['Cc'], e['subject']))
        payload = e.get_payload()
        if type(payload) in (list, tuple):
            payload = str(payload[0])
        else:
            payload = str(payload)
        encrypted_payload = piped_call('echo', (payload,),
                                       'gpg', ('-e', '-a', '-r', 'MYGPGKEYID'))
        body += encrypted_payload
        piped_call('echo', (body,), 
                   'mail', ['USERNAME@gmail.com', '-s', subject])
        shlf[num] = datetime.now()


M.close()
M.logout()

I then added the following lines to my crontab (the script above is named mail.py inside a directory called mail), so it will run every 5 minutes during the normal hours on weekdays (M-F 8-7pm) and less frequently at other hours. (crontab -e)

# Every 5 minutes, M-F from 8am - 7pm.    
*/5 8-19 * * 1-5  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1
# Every 30 minutes, Sat&Sun from 8am-7pm
0,30 8-19 * * 6,7  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1
# Every 30 minutes, M-F 8pm-2am; (no emails 2am-8am)
0,30 0-2,20-23 * * 1-5  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1
# Every 60 minutes, Sat&Sun hours 8pm-2am; (no emails 2am-8am)
0 0-2,20-23 * * 6-7  cd /home/USERNAME/mail && ./mail.py >> /home/USERNAME/mail/mail.log 2>&1

Traditional mailx does not support IMAP or POP, but the one that comes with Linux does.

For your particular problem, I recommend using fetchmail instead. You can use the --mda option to have fetchmail execute a script of your choice for each downloaded message. It can even pass the From and To addresses as parameters to your script if you use %F and %T as placeholders in the command line.

First, create a mailsorter script:

#!/bin/sh

dest_mbox="$1"
from="$2"
to="$3"

case "$from-$to" in
  someone@example.net-myname)
     echo "From $from  `date`" >> "$dest_mbox"
     cat >> "$dest_mbox"
     ;;
  *)
     cat > /dev/null
     ;;
esac

Then run fetchmail -u myname popserver.example.com --mda './mailsorter /tmp/mbox %F %T'

While testing this solution, give fetchmail the --all and --keep flags to make sure that you don't delete your mail accidentally.