Tài liệu Hacking GMail docx

Hacking Gmail
™
Ben Hammersley
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page iii
Hacking Gmail
™
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page i
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page ii
Hacking Gmail
™
Ben Hammersley
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page iii
For general information on our other products and services or to obtain technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department
within the U.S. at (800) 762-2974, outside the U.S. at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hammersley, Ben.
Hacking Gmail / Ben Hammersley.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-9611-7 (paper/website)
ISBN-10: 0-7645-9611-X (paper/website)
1. Gmail (Electronic resource) 2. Electronic mail systems. 3. Internet programming. I. Title.
TK5105.74.G55H36 2006
004.692—dc22
2005029719
Trademarks: Wiley and the Wiley logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and/or its affiliates, in the United
States and other countries, and may not be used without written permission. ExtremeTech and the ExtremeTech logo are trademarks of Ziff
Davis Publishing Holdings, Inc. Used under license. All rights reserved. Gmail is a trademark of Google, Inc. All other trademarks are the
property of their respective owners. Wiley Publishing, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Hacking Gmail™
Published by
Wiley Publishing, Inc.
10475 Crosspoint Boulevard
Indianapolis, IN 46256
www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2006 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana
Published simultaneously in Canada
ISBN-13: 978-0-7645-9611-7
ISBN-10: 0-7645-9611-X
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
1B/RU/RS/QV/IN
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States
Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy
fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600. Requests to the
Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Legal Department, Wiley Publishing, Inc., 10475 Crosspoint Blvd., Indianapolis, IN
46256, (317) 572-3447, fax (317) 572-4355, or online at />Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: The publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the
accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation warranties of
fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies
contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in
rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional
person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. The fact that an organization or
Website is referred to in this work as a citation and/or a potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the
publisher endorses the information the organization or Website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be
aware that Internet Websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read.
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page iv
Meanwhile, back in Florence, Anna, Lucy, Mischa, and Pico ignored
the swearing and kept me fed. Love, as ever, to them.

01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page v
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page vi
About the Author
Armed only with a PowerBook and some fine pipe tobacco, Ben Hammersley is a
journalist, writer, explorer, and an errant developer and explainer of semantic web
technology. He’s also liable to spread his dirty, dirty words over at The Guardian.
As an Englishman of the clichéd sort, Ben’s angle brackets always balance, and his
tweed is always pressed. He’s not worn trousers for six months now. Ask him
about it sometime.
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page vii
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page viii
Credits
Executive Editor
Chris Webb
Development Editor
Brian Herrmann
Technical Editor
Justin Blanton
Production Editor
Kenyon Brown
Copy Editor
Nancy Rapoport
Editorial Manager
Mary Beth Wakefield
Production Manager
Tim Tate
Vice President and Executive Group
Publisher
Richard Swadley
Vice President and Executive Publisher

Joseph B. Wikert
Project Coordinator
Michael Kruzil
Graphics and Production Specialists
Carrie A. Foster
Lynsey Osborn
Melanee Prendergast
Quality Control Technicians
Leeann Harney, Jessica Kramer,
Charles Spencer, Brian H. Walls
Proofreading and Indexing
TECHBOOKS Production Services
Cover Design
Anthony Bunyan
01_59611x ffirs.qxp 11/28/05 11:09 PM Page ix
Contents at a Glance
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Part I: Starting to Use Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 1: Desktop Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 2: Integrating Your Existing Mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Chapter 3: Gmail Power Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Part II: Getting Inside Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 4: Skinning Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Chapter 5: How Gmail Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Chapter 6: Gmail and Greasemonkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Chapter 7: Gmail Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Chapter 8: Checking for Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Chapter 9: Reading Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Chapter 10: Sending Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161

Part III: Conquering Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Chapter 11: Dealing with Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Chapter 12: Addressing Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Chapter 13: Building an API from the HTML-Only Version of Gmail. . . . . . . . . . 183
Chapter 14: Exporting Your Mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Chapter 15: Using Gmail to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Chapter 16: Using GmailFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Appendix: Long Code Listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
02_59611x ftoc.qxp 11/28/05 11:05 PM Page x
Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xix
Part I: Starting to Use Gmail 1
Chapter 1: Desktop Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
New Mail Notification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Mac OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Linux, etc. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Redirecting mailto: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Multiplatform/Mozilla . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
OS X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
GmailerXP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Chapter 2: Integrating Your Existing Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Importing Your Mail into Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Gmail Loader . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Setting Up Pop Access Inside Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Setting Up Pop Within an Application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

IMAP for Gmail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
And Now . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Chapter 3: Gmail Power Tips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Keyboard Shortcuts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Plus Addressing and Filtering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Other Addressing Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Quickly Mark a Group of E-Mails . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Send Executables as Attachments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Advanced Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
And Now . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
02_59611x ftoc.qxp 11/28/05 11:05 PM Page xi
Part II: Getting Inside Gmail 27
Chapter 4: Skinning Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Deconstructing Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
The Top Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
The Navigation Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
The Activity Area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
The Bottom Section . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Applying a New Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Creating Gmail Lite . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Walking Through the Style Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Removing Google’s Advertising . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
And Now . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
Chapter 5: How Gmail Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
What the Devil Is Going On? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Preloading the Interface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Introducing XMLHttpRequest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Using XMLHttpRequest Yourself . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Finding XMLHttpRequest within the Gmail code . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Sniffing the Network Traffic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Firing Up Tcpflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Prodding Gmail to Hear It Squeak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Preparing to Watch the Gmail Boot Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Cleaning Up the Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Stepping Through the Gmail Boot Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Logging In . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
The First Cookie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Loading the Inbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Reading an Individual Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
And Now . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Chapter 6: Gmail and Greasemonkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
What Is Greasemonkey?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
The Userscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Displaying Bloglines Within Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
How It Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Add a Delete Button. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
GmailSecure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
MailtoComposeInGmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Other Userscripts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Mark Read Button. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Multiple Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Hide Invites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Random Signatures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
xii
Contents
02_59611x ftoc.qxp 11/28/05 11:05 PM Page xii
Chapter 7: Gmail Libraries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
PHP — Gmailer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Getting and Installing the Library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118

How to Use It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Perl — Mail::Webmail::Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Getting and Installing the Library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Using the Library . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Python — Libgmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Getting and Installing the Library. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
How to Use It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Reading the First Message in the Inbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
Setting Yourselves Up for the Remaining Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Chapter 8: Checking for Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
The Basics in Perl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
The Basics in PHP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
The Basics in Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Building on the Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
New Mail Count in RSS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
New Mail Count to AOL Instant Messenger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Chapter 9: Reading Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Reading Mail with Perl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Accessing All the Data of a Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Listing the Mail and Displaying a Chosen Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Dealing with Attachments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Making an RSS Feed of Your Inbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Chapter 10: Sending Mail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Sending Mail with Gmail SMTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Sending Mail with Perl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166

Part III: Conquering Gmail 167
Chapter 11: Dealing with Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Listing the Existing Labels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Setting New Labels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Creating a New Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Removing Labels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
xiii
Contents
xiii
02_59611x ftoc.qxp 11/28/05 11:05 PM Page xiii
Chapter 12: Addressing Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
The Contacts List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Importing Contacts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
Showing Your Current Contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Exporting Contacts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Chapter 13: Building an API from the HTML-Only Version of Gmail . . . 183
A First Look at the HTML Version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Introducing Basic Scraping. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
HTML::TokeParser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
Parsing the Inbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
Retrieving the Individual Page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
Dealing with Threads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Dealing with Other Folders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
Chapter 14: Exporting Your Mail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Exporting as a Massive Text File . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Converting to Mbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Appending to IMAP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Chapter 15: Using Gmail to . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Using Gmail as a To-Do List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Using Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Using gmtodo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Using Gmail to Find Information in RSS Feeds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Using Gmail to Find Torrent Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Using Gmail as a Notepad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
Using Gmail as a Spam Filter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
An Even Simpler Way of Doing It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
Using Gmail as Storage for a Photo Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
And Now . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Chapter 16: Using GmailFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
The Underlying Idea . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Installing GmailFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
The Correct Python . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Installing FUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Installing Libgmail. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Installing GmailFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Using GmailFS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Mounting GmailFS from the Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Mounting GmailFS from fstab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Passing Commands to the File System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
xiv
Contents
02_59611x ftoc.qxp 11/28/05 11:05 PM Page xiv