Message.Payload is always null for all messages. How do I get this data? - gmail-api

Question

It is returning the correct number of message, but the only fields that are populated are Id and ThreadId. Everything else is null
var service = new GmailService(new BaseClientService.Initializer()
{
HttpClientInitializer = credential,
ApplicationName = ApplicationName,
});
ListMessagesResponse response = service.Users.Messages.List(emailAddress).Execute();
IList<Google.Apis.Gmail.v1.Data.Message> messages = response.Messages;
Console.WriteLine("Messages:");
if (messages != null && messages.Count > 0)
{
foreach (var message in messages)
{
Console.WriteLine("{0}", message.Payload.Body);
Console.WriteLine();
}
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("No Messages found.");
}

Answer 1

Messages.List() only returns message and thread ids. To retrieve message contents, you need to invoke Get() for each message you are interested in. Updated version of your foreach loop example:
foreach (var message in messages)
{
Message m = service.Users.Messages.Get("me", message.Id).Execute();
// m.Payload is populated now.
foreach (var part in m.Payload.Parts)
{
byte[] data = Convert.FromBase64String(part.Body.Data);
string decodedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(data);
Console.WriteLine(decodedString);
}
}
Note: You may need to run a string replace on the part.Body.Data string. See this post for instructions.