How to get the number of unread gmail mails (on android)

Question

Please note there is a new way of doing this

I\'ve been trying to get the number of unread gmail mails with no luck.

I\'ve read Gmail.java and gmail4j both l

Answer 1

This is how I've seen it done in a simple widget for the awesome window manager (yes, that's its name :)). Original script is here: gmail.lua.

The basic concept is to just use the inbox feed and get all the mails (you'll get just the summaries, not the whole content) for the special 'unread' tag. The URL is https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom/unread, you just have to fetch it (after authentication, of course), and then parse it. You can either use some sort of XML parser or just a simple regexp (([%d]+)) - the number you are looking for is at the beginning, in the tag.

So, that's one way of doing it, quite simple and "dumb", but hey, it works :D It might not be the best solution, as it requires you to fetch the whole feed (depending on the number of your unread messages and the type/quality of connection, it might not be as fast as just fetching the number of unread messages), but as usual, real-life testing should clear that up :)