# Getting email replies with Net::IMAP **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 6, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/getting-email-replies-with-net-imap/171622 "2009-07-06T18:33:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pimeamark)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 6:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/getting-email-replies-with-net-imap/171622/1 "2009-07-06T18:33:39Z")
Hi, I recently made a program that retrieves emails from an inbox and enters the body of those emails into a database using IMAP. I was just wondering, is there any function in IMAP or other solution where I can just get the body of the new email and exclude the quoted parts of the previous emails? for example, currently I’m getting things like this in my database: Let’s try this one out On Jun 30, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Mark wrote: \> Thanks for all your help bud. ^^ here i only want the “Let’s try this one out” and not the text that comes after it. Different email providers handle quoting in different ways, so I don’t think it’s as easy as looking for a certain string and deleting the text after it. I wouldn’t want to do that anyway. Is there an object in IMAP that handles this? Just curious if anyone has similar experience. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pimeamark)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 7:31pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/getting-email-replies-with-net-imap/171622/2 "2009-07-06T19:31:15Z")
Mark Mr wrote: […] > Different email providers handle quoting in different ways, so I don’t > think it’s as easy as looking for a certain string and deleting the text > after it. You just answered your own question. There’s no single standard for quoting text, so how could there be anything in the IMAP protocol to identify it? > I wouldn’t want to do that anyway. Is there an object in IMAP > that handles this? Oh, wait, you mean something in the Net::IMAP library rather than the protocol command set? In that case I’m not sure, but since it’s easy enough to write a couple of regexps to handle the common cases, I’m not sure why you’d need it. ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pimeamark)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2012, 7:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/getting-email-replies-with-net-imap/171622/3 "2012-10-09T19:20:58Z")
There’s a Ruby gem to handle this, released by Github: > **[GitHub - github/email\_reply\_parser: Small library to parse plain text email...](https://github.com/github/email_reply_parser)** > > Small library to parse plain text email content. Contribute to github/email\_reply\_parser development by creating an account on GitHub. The Ultimation wrote in post #832834: > Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote: > > > You just answered your own question. There’s no single standard for > > quoting text, so how could there be anything in the IMAP protocol to > > identify it? > > > Oh, wait, you mean something in the Net::IMAP library rather than the > > protocol command set? In that case I’m not sure, but since it’s easy > > enough to write a couple of regexps to handle the common cases, I’m not > > sure why you’d need it. > > I wasn’t sure if there was some way of IMAP identifying quotes within an > email’s body, but I know technology can do some crazy things so why not > 🙂 Just curious if anyone had done something similar and what worked for > them. Thanks for the reply though. I’ll resort to regexps if necessary. ---
**Author:** ![pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/9e8a1a/32.png) [@pimeamark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pimeamark)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/getting-email-replies-with-net-imap/171622/4 "2009-07-06T19:58:51Z")
Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote: > You just answered your own question. There’s no single standard for > quoting text, so how could there be anything in the IMAP protocol to > identify it? > Oh, wait, you mean something in the Net::IMAP library rather than the > protocol command set? In that case I’m not sure, but since it’s easy > enough to write a couple of regexps to handle the common cases, I’m not > sure why you’d need it. I wasn’t sure if there was some way of IMAP identifying quotes within an email’s body, but I know technology can do some crazy things so why not 🙂 Just curious if anyone had done something similar and what worked for them. Thanks for the reply though. I’ll resort to regexps if necessary.