import mailbox
    from email.utils import parsedate
    from dateutil.parser import parse
    import itertools
    import plotly.plotly as py
    from plotly.graph_objs import *
    import plotly.tools as tls
    import csv
    from itertools import izip

    path = 'mail.mbox'
    mbox = mailbox.mbox(path)

    def extract_date(email):
        date = email.get('Date')
        return parsedate(date)

 #sort the email by a given date
    sorted_mails = sorted(mbox, key=extract_date)
    mbox.update(enumerate(sorted_mails))
    mbox.flush()

 #it finds all the dates within the MBOX and split
    all_dates = []
    mbox = mailbox.mbox(path)
    for message in mbox:
        all_dates.append( str( parse( message['date'] ) ).split(' ')[0] )

 #counts the number of emails per given date
    email_count = [(g[0], len(list(g[1]))) for g in itertools.groupby(all_dates)]
    email_count[0]

 #makes a list of (x,y)
    x = []
    y = []
    for date, count in email_count:
        x.append(date)
        y.append(count)

 #produce a CSV file of X and Y, for plotting
    with open('data.csv', 'wb') as f:
        writer = csv.writer(f)
        writer.writerows(izip(x, y))