using notmuch programmatically from emacs

[David Bremner]

Alan Schmitt <alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org> writes:

> Hello,
>
> I sometimes have to find a message knowing only its message id. I know
> how to use a notmuch search in emacs to find the message, then use
> another function to display it in gnus, but I would like to do it
> directly without going through the *notmuch-search* buffer.
>
> Right now I'm doing the following:
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp
>   (defun as/msgid-to-gnus (msgid)
>     "Search for the MSGID using notmuch, then open the message with
>   gnus."
>     (let ((file (shell-command-to-string (concat "notmuch search --output=files 'id:" msgid "'"))))

The structured output formats (sexp, json) include file names, so you
should be able to use something like the following

(defun notmuch-query-get-message-filenames (&rest search-terms)
  "Return a list of message-ids of messages that match SEARCH-TERMS"
  (notmuch-query-map-threads
   (lambda (msg) (plist-get msg :filename))
   (notmuch-query-get-threads search-terms)))

This is based on the example at the bottom of notmuch-query.el