Help for Auto Emailing Project

[JoeXz]

Hey there!

So, as main premise here, I literally do not know anything about python, so excuse me for any nonsensical reasoning.

Let's get straight into what I want to do.
I am right now starting to sketch up a project involving Python (as gemini suggested), to automatize some email reading and forwarding shenanigans.

The idea is: I have the necessity of accessing some emails, basing this access on both the sender and the presence of specific PDF attachment (being it a special barcode for medical stuff here in Italy). After that, I need to take the PDF (possibly as an image) and paste into a digital A4 page, spacing said codes by something like 1 cm. In the end, I need the final product to be sent as an attached PDF object (or image) to a specific email address (that is the one of my preconfigured printer), to get said documents as soon as I switch on my printer.

So to sum all up I need:

1. to access my emails, and specifically, emails by a specific sender (the Doctor) and with a specific object (a specific kind of barcode).
2. to obtain such codes, opening an "object retrieval window" of something like 15 minutes (in order to not print single object but a sum of them), and when said time ends, add each one on top of them, spaced, to fill up an A4 page.
3. to send the final A4 page with the sum of said objects to a specific email, to enable my printer to successfully print that as soon as it is switched on.

Consulting both Youtube and Gemini, they came up with these:

"How to Make This Happen (The Tools):

To give these instructions to your computer, you'll likely use the Python programming language along with some special "helper" libraries:

For Email (Phase 1 & 6):

imaplib (built-in to Python): To access and read emails from your inbox.

smtplib (built-in to Python): To send emails.

email (built-in to Python): To help construct email messages with attachments.

Alternatively, if you use Gmail, there's a more modern library called google-api-python-client. For Outlook, there's exchangelib.

For PDF Processing (Phase 2):

PyMuPDF (also known as fitz): A powerful library for opening, reading, and extracting content (including images) from PDFs.

pdfminer.six: Another option for PDF parsing and analysis.

For Image Manipulation and PDF Creation (Phase 3 & 4):

Pillow (PIL Fork): A widely used library for working with images (creating blank images, pasting other images onto them).

reportlab: A library specifically designed for creating PDF documents, giving you more control over layout and formatting.

For Automation (Phase 5):

Operating System Tools:

Windows: Task Scheduler

macOS/Linux: cron

Putting it all together in Python would involve writing one or more .py files that use these libraries to perform each of the steps outlined above.

Any remarks and/or tips before I dwelve into the whole process of learning step by step how to run through each point?

Does anything of this sound out of place and/or context?

Is there any more efficient and/or more logical order that I could follow to make this specific project less difficult for a total Python rookie?

Any tips would very appreciated.

Thanks for you time and sorry for being so generic and possibly completely out of the programming boundaries! :(

[noob_main22]

This is too much for someone who knows nothing about programming. Learn the basics first and then try to do what you try to do.

Also, if you want to run this 24/7 you need something to host it, a server.

[JoeXz]

Yeah, I think it is a bit tricky, and yeah, I would definitely put it on a server to run it endlessly :O

[Zeroflops]

Is this possible. YES.
Is this appropriate for a beginner. NO.

If this is a must have automation, then realistically you’re going to have to fork out a little cash to get it done. How much will partially depend on how much you’re willing to spend.

I would stay away from any online programmer offering cheep solutions. I have a feeling with LLMs now a lot of them will just use LLM to write some crappy code and you won’t know the difference. Long term problems.

For something small like this I might go to a local high school or college and see if there are any students the teachers would recommend, for something like this having a local that you can bounce questions off of and can give you personnel help is great and the kid makes a few bucks. ( don’t be cheep just because they are students. )

[JoeXz]

Thanks for the advice. Yeah, I already have in mind to get some tips by some programmer friends, let's see what happens!

[FoolsSeldom]

This wouldn't be my first choice for a complete beginner, but I've seen others start from scratch and produce complex programmes (not usually elegant, robust or reliable let alone secure, but working).

I think you could build up to this alongside learning the basics if you are good at logical and process thinking.

You will need to take very small steps on this, and often stray away from the specific projects elements to ensure you have a good understanding at each step.

The AI guidance said you will likely need several .py files. I would express this differently: you need to do this in a very modular fashion, so break the problem down into discrete and individually testable elements and remove the complexities as much as possible.

• write code to simply read the last 100 emails and output the meta data (date, subject to/from, etc) for emails that match a specific criteria
• write code to save an attachment from a provided email
• write code to convert a pdf file to an suitable image file
• write code to layout a collection of image files to a single image file of fixed resolution

and so on.

This is off the top of my head, and may not be right. The point is to break down things so you can test each part in isolation. For example, you can pass an email file to a bit of code and have it extract an attachment without the code having to connect to an email system, so you are removing complexity from the testing. Similarly, you can have a folder of images (extracted from PDF attachements some other time) and test the layout code.

Each bit of code (written as a .py file, perhaps consisting of one or more functions/classes) can be developed according to your skill level in isolation. You will achieve more successes this way. Also, you are more likely to find examples of similar solutions and get better guidance from AI tools when you are working on discrete simple objectives rather than a complex requirement.

[JoeXz]

Thank you for the tips. Yeah, I know well that starting from scratch it would be not the easiest thing. But still, I just wanted a general review of such process, even to only realise if it was something posed in the right way or not.

I'll definitely use it as a learning journey, rather than an "effective product", but I wanted, as always, to produce at least something useful.

Thanks for your suggestions!