I’m working on a project where I need to forward emails programmatically using the Gmail API. I’ve been looking through the documentation but can’t seem to find a straightforward way to do this. What I want to accomplish is taking an existing email from someone’s inbox and forwarding it to another recipient, but I also need to add some additional text or comments before the original message content. Has anyone successfully implemented email forwarding functionality with the Gmail API? I’m particularly interested in: - How to retrieve the original message content - How to format it properly for forwarding - How to add custom text above the forwarded content - The correct API endpoints to use for sending the forwarded message Any code examples or guidance would be really helpful. I’m stuck on this and would appreciate any assistance from the community.
When using the Gmail API to forward emails, you must manually construct the forwarded message since there’s no built-in forwarding method. Start by retrieving the original email with messages.get, pulling the necessary headers like From, To, and Subject. Change the Subject to “Fwd: [original subject]” and create a new email with a multipart MIME structure. Place your custom text at the beginning, then include the original message content with the headers in plain text. Lastly, ensure to base64url encode the complete message before using messages.send, and handle any attachments as required.
hey! I just did this not long ago. first, use messages.get to get the email, then create a new one with messages.send.
for formatting, add your text and start with “---------- forwarded message ----------”. make sure the mime headers are right or itll look off.