gmail-yaml-filters

A quick tool for generating Gmail filters from YAML rules.

Interested in helping? See CONTRIBUTING.md for a few guidelines.

Getting Started

It's strongly recommended to use a tool like pipx to install this package in an isolated environment:

$ pipx install gmail-yaml-filters

Generating XML

By default, the command line script will generate XML to stdout, which you can then upload to Gmail yourself:

$ gmail-yaml-filters my-filters.yaml > my-filters.xml

Synchronization via Gmail API

If you are the trusting type, you can authorize the script to upload new filters and remove obsolete filters via Gmail's API. Before using any of these commands, you will need to create client_secret.json and store it in the same directory as your YAML file.

# Upload all filters (and create new labels) from the configuration file
$ gmail-yaml-filters --upload my-filters.yaml

# Delete any filters that aren't defined in the configuration file
$ gmail-yaml-filters --prune my-filters.yaml

# Do both of these steps at once.
$ gmail-yaml-filters --sync my-filters.yaml

# See what would happen but don't apply any changes.
$ gmail-yaml-filters --dry-run --sync my-filters.yaml

# Delete all your filters. (Yikes!)
$ gmail-yaml-filters --delete-all

If you need to pipe configuration from somewhere else, you can do that by passing a single dash as the filename.

# (but why would you need to do this?)
$ cat filters.yaml | gmail-yaml-filters --sync -

Sample Configuration

# Simple example
-
  from: googlealerts-noreply@google.com
  label: news
  not_important: true

# Boolean conditions
-
  from:
    any:
      - alice
      - bob
      - carol
  to:
    all: [me, -MyBoss]
  label: conspiracy

# Nested conditions
-
  from: lever.co
  label: hiring
  more:
    -
      has: 'completed feedback'
      archive: true
    -
      has: 'what is your feedback'
      star: true
      important: true

# Foreach loops
-
  for_each:
    - list1
    - list2
    - list3
  rule:
    to: "{item}@mycompany.com"
    label: "{item}"

# Foreach loops with complex structures
-
  for_each:
    - [mailing-list-1a, list1]
    - [mailing-list-1b, list1]
    - [mailing-list-1c, list1]
    - [mailing-list-2a, list2]
    - [mailing-list-2b, list2]
  rule:
    to: "{item[0]}@mycompany.com"
    label: "{item[1]}"
-
  for_each:
    - {list: list1, domain: example.com}
    - {list: list2, domain: whatever.com}
  rule:
    to: "{list}@{domain}"
    label: "{list}"

Configuration

Supported conditions:

• has (also match)
• does_not_have (also missing, no_match)
• subject
• list
• labeled
• from, to, cc, and bcc
• category
• deliveredto
• filename
• larger
• smaller
• size
• rfc822msgid
• is and has work like Gmail's search operators, for example:
  • has: attachment is translated to match: "has:attachment"
  • is: -snoozed is translated to no_match: "is:snoozed"

Supported actions:

• archive
• forward
• important (also mark_as_important)
• label, including support for Gmail's category tabs:
  • CATEGORY_PERSONAL
  • CATEGORY_SOCIAL
  • CATEGORY_PROMOTIONS
  • CATEGORY_UPDATES
  • CATEGORY_FORUMS
• not_important (also never_mark_as_important)
• not_spam
• read (also mark_as_read)
• star
• trash (also delete)

Any set of rules with ignore: true will be ignored and not written to XML.

Similar Projects

• gmail-britta is written in Ruby and lets you express rules with a DSL.
• gmail-filters is written in Python and has a web frontend.
• google-mail-filter is written in Haskell and lets you express rules with a DSL.
• Gefilte Fish is written in Python and lets you express rules with a DSL.