Getting error while reading outlook mails in Node.js

Question

Goal: I am trying to read the mails (outlook) with certain filters like 'from specified user','read','sent' etc. Used a module "IMAP" for parsing. I have to read the mail and download and store attachments from the mail in a certain location (preferably local). But my code is failing to connect to the mail server. Below is my code which results in 'Auth:timeout error' when I ran.

Please let me know what is wrong with my code. Thanks in advance!

var Imap = require('imap'),
  inspect = require('util').inspect;
var fs = require('fs'), fileStream;
var buffer = '';

var myMap;


var imap = new Imap({
  user: "put user id here",
  password: "put your password here",
  host: "outlook.office365.com", //this may differ if you are using some other mail services like yahoo
  port: 993,
  tls: true,
//   connTimeout: 10000, // Default by node-imap 
//   authTimeout: 5000, // Default by node-imap, 
  debug: console.log, // Or your custom function with only one incoming argument. Default: null 
  tlsOptions: true,
  mailbox: "INBOX", // mailbox to monitor 
  searchFilter: ["UNSEEN", "FLAGGED"], // the search filter being used after an IDLE notification has been retrieved 
  markSeen: true, // all fetched email willbe marked as seen and not fetched next time 
  fetchUnreadOnStart: true, // use it only if you want to get all unread email on lib start. Default is `false`, 
  mailParserOptions: { streamAttachments: true }, // options to be passed to mailParser lib. 
  attachments: true, // download attachments as they are encountered to the project directory 
  attachmentOptions: { directory: "attachments/" } // specify a download directory for attachments 
});

function openInbox(cb) {
  imap.openBox('INBOX', false, cb);
}

imap.once('ready', function () {
  openInbox(function (err, box) {
    if (err) throw err;
    imap.search(['UNSEEN', ['SUBJECT', 'Give Subject Here']], function (err, results) {
      if (err) throw err;
      var f = imap.fetch(results, { bodies: '1', markSeen: true });
      f.on('message', function (msg, seqno) {
        console.log('Message #%d' + seqno);
        console.log('Message type' + msg.text)
        var prefix = '(#' + seqno + ') ';
        msg.on('body', function (stream, info) {
          stream.on('data', function (chunk) {
            buffer += chunk.toString('utf8');
            console.log("BUFFER" + buffer)

          })
          stream.once('end', function () {
            if (info.which === '1') {
              console.log("BUFFER" + buffer)
            }


          });
          console.log(prefix + 'Body');
          stream.pipe(fs.createWriteStream('msg-' + seqno + '-body.txt'));
        });
        msg.once('attributes', function (attrs) {
          console.log(prefix + 'Attributes: %s', inspect(attrs, false, 8));
        });
        msg.once('end', function () {
          console.log(prefix + 'Finished');
        });
      });
      f.once('error', function (err) {
        console.log('Fetch error: ' + err);
      });
      f.once('end', function () {
        console.log('Done fetching all messages!');
        imap.end();
      });
    });
  });
});

imap.once('error', function (err) {
  console.log(err);
});

imap.once('end', function () {
  console.log('Connection ended');
});

imap.connect(); 

Answer 1

It's not exactly what you asked for but an alternative implementation that uses ImapFlow module instead of node-imap, and that I just verified to work against Outlook looks like the script below. If you still get timeouts etc. then it is probably a firewall issue.

const { ImapFlow } = require("imapflow");
const fs = require("fs").promises;

const client = new ImapFlow({
  host: "outlook.office365.com",
  port: 993,
  secure: true,
  auth: {
    user: "[email protected]",
    pass: "secretpass",
  },
  logger: false, // set to true if you want to see IMAP transaction logs
});

// can't run await in main scope, have to wrap it to an async function
async function main() {
  // establish the connection and log in
  await client.connect();

  // open INBOX folder
  let mailbox = await client.mailboxOpen("INBOX");

  // list messages matching provided criteria
  for await (let msg of client.fetch(
    {
      // search query to filter messages
      // https://imapflow.com/global.html#SearchObject
      seen: false,
      subject: "Give Subject Here",
    },
    {
      // attributes to request for
      // https://imapflow.com/global.html#FetchQueryObject
      uid: true,
      flags: true,
      internalDate: true,
      bodyStructure: true,
      // include full message body in the response as well
      source: true,
    }
  )) {
    // extract variables
    let { seq, uid, flags, bodyStructure, internalDate, source } = msg;

    console.log(`#${seq} Attributes:`, { seq, uid, flags, bodyStructure, internalDate });

    // store message body as an eml file
    await fs.writeFile(`msg-${seq}.eml`, source);
  }

  // close the connection
  await client.logout();
}

main().catch(console.error);