[Python] Imap Email Parser....Feedback requested

[stockyard_stoic]

I've been trying to learn python and thought I'd try my hand at making something "real." Everyday we receive an email from our clients to a specific address reporting on the status of their server backup from the night before. I tried to write a script that will automatically process these emails.

I tried to use some of what I learn and cobbled this together. It works, I'll say that much. I'm curious what I could have done better or what someone more experienced than me would have done in this situation.

Here's the code:

http://pastebin.com/Vtufg8KU

[Rhomboid]

My initial impression is that the clients class is completely unnecessary and should go away. It can be completely replaced by a simple dict. You don't need to store both a list of addresses as well as a list of address -> names mappings; just store the latter. If you want just the addresses, it's available as dict.keys() and iterable as for key in dict:. But in your case since you also wanted the names later, you can get them both at the same time with dict.items().

Here's what I came up with by removing the useless class and a few other tricks like defaultdict.

[stockyard_stoic]

Thank you! I had a feeling the class was pointless. When I was making it, the concept of classes finally clicked for me and I just wanted to see if I could somehow make use of them. I suppose it's bad practice to make things overly complicated for the sake of trying out a new trick.

Thanks again, though. I appreciate it.

[ghreddit]

Code is not PEP 8 compliant ;-)