[reading email] How to save the attachments?

[sonja.chevre]

Hello !

I'm looking for a script which allows me to read emails and attachment
from a pop server (then I'll save the email's text in a db and the
attachments on the server).

So I have found this article: http://www.phpit.net/article/read-email-php-pop3/

....
$email = $pop3->get_mail($i) ; // how to get the email
....

But then how do I get the information about my attachments and how can
I save them?

Thanks a lot
Sonja

[davidkruger]

On Jul 26, 3:49 am, sonja.che...@gm ail.com wrote:

Hello !

I'm looking for a script which allows me to read emails and attachment
from a pop server (then I'll save the email's text in a db and the
attachments on the server).

So I have found this article:http://www.phpit.net/article/read-email-php-pop3/

...
$email = $pop3->get_mail($i) ; // how to get the email
...

But then how do I get the information about my attachments and how can
I save them?

Thanks a lot
Sonja

Hi, I may not be the best to respond to this, since I am not familiar
with reading the pop3 e-mail through php at all...but I do know that
with e-mails, attachments are encoded right in the text of the
message, if you save a message and view it in a text editor, you will
likely see the encoded text for your attachement(s).

In the headers for the e-mail message you will find a section similar
to:

------=_NextPart_000_ 001C_01C7C9E5.5 6D0D990
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_001_ 001D_01C7C9E5.5 6D32380"

Directly above the encoded attachment will be a section similar to:

------=_NextPart_000_ 001C_01C7C9E5.5 6D0D990
Content-Type: application/x-zip-compressed;
name="BELL REPLACEMENT FILES.zip"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment;
filename="BELL REPLACEMENT FILES.zip"
------=_NextPart_000_ 001C_01C7C9E5.5 6D0D990--

As you notice the content in the mail is encoded as base64.

Where ever the string after the boundary= portion is, will be either
the e-mail message itself, content-type info, or the attachment data
itself. Once you get your text from the e-mail file that is the
encoded attachment, you could probably use:

$file_as_str=ba se64_decode($en coded_string);

which you should then be able to just output the contents of the
base64_decode results to a file to have the attachment file saved, or
place the data in a blob in a mysql table or whatever you would choose
to do with it. Hopefully that makes sense.

[Rik]

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:49:30 +0200, <so**********@g mail.comwrote:

Hello !

I'm looking for a script which allows me to read emails and attachment
from a pop server (then I'll save the email's text in a db and the
attachments on the server).

So I have found this article:
http://www.phpit.net/article/read-email-php-pop3/

...
$email = $pop3->get_mail($i) ; // how to get the email
...

But then how do I get the information about my attachments and how can
I save them?

Aside from the correct notes from David, there are several packages who
can do this for you without having to reinvent the wheel. Several come to
mind:

1. <http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/ref.imap.php>
2. <http://nl2.php.net/mailparse>
3.
<http://pear.php.net/package/Mail_mimeDecode/docs/latest/Mail_Mime/Mail_mimeDecode .html>

--
Rik Wasmus

[sonja.chevre]

Great! Thank you to both of you for the useful information

[bill]

Rik wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:49:30 +0200, <so**********@g mail.comwrote:

>Hello !

I'm looking for a script which allows me to read emails and attachment
from a pop server (then I'll save the email's text in a db and the
attachments on the server).

So I have found this article:
http://www.phpit.net/article/read-email-php-pop3/

...
$email = $pop3->get_mail($i) ; // how to get the email
...

But then how do I get the information about my attachments and how can
I save them?

Aside from the correct notes from David, there are several packages who
can do this for you without having to reinvent the wheel. Several come
to mind:

1. <http://nl2.php.net/manual/en/ref.imap.php>
2. <http://nl2.php.net/mailparse>
3.
<http://pear.php.net/package/Mail_mimeDecode/docs/latest/Mail_Mime/Mail_mimeDecode .html>

http://nl2.php.net/mailparse results in a 404

http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ref.mailparse.php works

bill