Parature Gmail Feed

Description

The Parature Gmail Feed:

• Retrieves emails cc'd to a Gmail account originating from Parature
• Extracts Parature specific content from each email
• Creates a record from the extracted content
• Loads the record to a MongoDB database

Installation

Install with pip

pip install paraturegmailfeed

Project requires MongoDB

See MongoDB documentation for installation instructions

Getting Started

Setting up your config file

Create a new .py file. For example my_config.py

# Gmail API Variables
CLIENT_SECRET_FILE = 'Exported from your Google application account'
SCOPES = 'Scopes for your Google application'
APPLICATION_NAME = 'Name of your application'

USER_ID = 'YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT USER ID'

TARGET_LABEL_QUERY = 'The label name '

# MongoDB Variables
MONGO_URI = 'YOUR DB URI'
DB_NAME = 'YOUR DB NAME'

Example of usage:

from paraturegmailfeed import ParatureGmailFeed


def main():
    feed = ParatureGmailFeed('my_config.py')
    feed.run()

main()

Running for the first time

Be sure to have mongod running.

You will be prompted to authorize the application to access your Gmail account. After accepting, the application will run automatically.

See official documentation for assistance

Design Decisions

Why MongoDB?

• Flexible schema. As requirement grow/change the data schema can to!
• Native functionality. Simple upserts (unlike most SQL databses).

How are duplicate records prevented?

• Gmail API message query is restricted to all messages that do NOT have the "Processed" label.
• The pymongo update_one method is used with the upsert option. This means that if a record already exists based on the composite key (ticket number and timestamp) the action will simply update the record (essentially do nothing).