Update: displaying the Gmail ATOM feed in your Web Browser

Update: you can download the script here and the script engine here. If your Gmail account name contains a 'dot', you should use the /a command line switch e.g. axscript /a:myaccount,mypassword gmail.csx

Transforming the Atom feed XML returned from Gmail to HTML and displaying the result in your web browser - makes the previous example somewhat more useful.

One way is to create a small transformation function (using a XSLT document like that provided by manalang.com) say in C#, and save it as xml.cs ...

// xml.cs
using System;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml;
using System.Xml.Xsl;

public class XML
{
    // an atom 0.3 transformation style sheet
    public static string AtomXsl =
            @"http://manalang.com/wp-content/atom03.xsl";
   
    // transform xml using a transformation document
    public static string Transform(string xmlDoc, string xslDoc)
    {
        XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
        doc.LoadXml(xmlDoc);
       
        // transform
        XslTransform transform = new XslTransform();
        transform.Load(xslDoc);
       
        StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
        transform.Transform(doc, null, writer, null);
       
        return writer.ToString();
    }  
}

Then replace the print(feedAsXML) line at the bottom of gmail.vb with the following code ...

' transform the atom xml feed to html
feedAsHtml = XML.Transform(feedAsXml, XML.AtomXsl)

' write the html to a temporary file
tempOutputFile = Path.GetTempFileName() & ".htm"
writer = new StreamWriter(File.Open(tempOutputFile, FileMode.Create))
writer.Write(feedAsHtml)
writer.Close()

' display file in browser
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(tempOutputFile)

Now if you add xml.cs to the command line, your unread gmail should be displayed in your web browser e.g. ...

ax[w]script [username] [password] gmail.vb xml.cs

For the record, here is the gmail.vb file in C#

// gmail.cs - gets unread mail from a gmail account as an atom feed
// for Alintex Script - www.alintex.com
// usage: ax(w)script [username] [password] gmail.cs

using System;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Net;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;

#region Script

// check commandline arguments
if (args.Length < 2)
{
   print("gmail.cs - gets unread gmail as an atom feed");
   print("Usage: ax(w)script [username] [password] gmail.cs");
   return;
}

WebClient client = new WebClient();
byte[] bytes = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(args[0] + ":" + args[1]);
client.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + Convert.ToBase64String(bytes));
 
const string gmailURI = @"https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom";
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(client.OpenRead(gmailURI));
string feedAsXml = reader.ReadToEnd();
reader.Close();
 
// transform the atom xml feed to html
string feedAsHtml = XML.Transform(feedAsXml, XML.AtomXsl);

// write the html to a temporary file
string tempOutputFile = Path.GetTempFileName() + ".htm";
StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(File.Open(tempOutputFile, FileMode.Create));
writer.Write(feedAsHtml);
writer.Close();

// display file in browser
Process.Start(tempOutputFile);

#endregion