Access to a POP3 mailbox

[bill]

I am in preliminary design of a contact management program. The
user would like to use his current mail server (POP3 - remote).

I have done some reading on the IMAP functions but am unclear if
the following is possible:

Using the IMAP functions can I write a PHP script to:
scan the subject lines of all mail in the mailbox ?
pop just certain messages from the inbox ?
delete those messages from the inbox ?

all without disturbing the other messages in his inbox that are
downloaded to his usual email client (Thunderbird).

If anyone can suggest a better way to do this, I am all ears.

bill

[C.]

On 22 Mar, 11:18, bill <[e-mail]:

I am in preliminary design of a contact management program. The
user would like to use his current mail server (POP3 - remote).

<snip>

Using the IMAP functions can I write a PHP script to:
scan the subject lines of all mail in the mailbox ?
pop just certain messages from the inbox ?
delete those messages from the inbox ?

Yes. Something like...

$in=imap_open(...);
$msgs=imap_headers($in); // gets the headers from the currently
available msgs
foreach ($msgs as $index=>$header) {
if (strstr($header, $look_for)) { // may want to explicitly extract
the subject
$email=imap_fetchstructure($in, $index);
if ($email && save($email)) {
imap_delete($in, $index);
}
}
}
imap_expunge($in);
imap_close($in);

all without disturbing the other messages in his inbox that are
downloaded to his usual email client (Thunderbird).

....but you need to make sure that he doesn't delete your meassages
from the mailbox when he downloads the other stuff.

If anyone can suggest a better way to do this, I am all ears.

It'd be a lot better to handle the messages synchronously, e.g. with a
custom procmail script launching the PHP script. But that rather
depends on having POSIX or similar on the MTA or MUA box.

C.

[Manuel Lemos]

Hello,

on 03/22/2007 08:18 AM bill said the following:

I am in preliminary design of a contact management program. The user
would like to use his current mail server (POP3 - remote).

I have done some reading on the IMAP functions but am unclear if the
following is possible:

Using the IMAP functions can I write a PHP script to:
scan the subject lines of all mail in the mailbox ?
pop just certain messages from the inbox ?
delete those messages from the inbox ?

all without disturbing the other messages in his inbox that are
downloaded to his usual email client (Thunderbird).

If anyone can suggest a better way to do this, I am all ears.

You may want to take a look at this POP3 class. You can use the class
RetrieveMessage function to retrieve just the message headers and get
only the first body lines you need.

http://www.phpclasses.org/pop3class

You can also this MIME message parser class that can decode message and
extract headers that use non-ASCII characters. I think you need that to
filter message by subject or sender, as messages with non-ASCII
characters are encoded with q-encoding like this:

=?iso-8859-1?Q?

http://www.phpclasses.org/mimeparser

--

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

Metastorage - Data object relational mapping layer generator
http://www.metastorage.net/

PHP Classes - Free ready to use OOP components written in PHP
http://www.phpclasses.org/

[bill]

C. wrote:

On 22 Mar, 11:18, bill <[e-mail]:

>I am in preliminary design of a contact management program. The
user would like to use his current mail server (POP3 - remote).

<snip>

>Using the IMAP functions can I write a PHP script to:
scan the subject lines of all mail in the mailbox ?
pop just certain messages from the inbox ?
delete those messages from the inbox ?

Yes. Something like...

$in=imap_open(...);
$msgs=imap_headers($in); // gets the headers from the currently
available msgs
foreach ($msgs as $index=>$header) {
if (strstr($header, $look_for)) { // may want to explicitly extract
the subject
$email=imap_fetchstructure($in, $index);
if ($email && save($email)) {
imap_delete($in, $index);
}
}
}
imap_expunge($in);
imap_close($in);

THank you.

>

>all without disturbing the other messages in his inbox that are
downloaded to his usual email client (Thunderbird).

...but you need to make sure that he doesn't delete your meassages
from the mailbox when he downloads the other stuff.

>If anyone can suggest a better way to do this, I am all ears.

It'd be a lot better to handle the messages synchronously, e.g. with a
custom procmail script launching the PHP script. But that rather
depends on having POSIX or similar on the MTA or MUA box.

C.

I don't have control over the MTA, which is on a mail server that
is not under the same ownership as the php server.
bill

[bill]

Manuel Lemos wrote:

Hello,

on 03/22/2007 08:18 AM bill said the following:

>I am in preliminary design of a contact management program. The user
would like to use his current mail server (POP3 - remote).

I have done some reading on the IMAP functions but am unclear if the
following is possible:

Using the IMAP functions can I write a PHP script to:
scan the subject lines of all mail in the mailbox ?
pop just certain messages from the inbox ?
delete those messages from the inbox ?

all without disturbing the other messages in his inbox that are
downloaded to his usual email client (Thunderbird).

If anyone can suggest a better way to do this, I am all ears.

You may want to take a look at this POP3 class. You can use the class
RetrieveMessage function to retrieve just the message headers and get
only the first body lines you need.

http://www.phpclasses.org/pop3class

You can also this MIME message parser class that can decode message and
extract headers that use non-ASCII characters. I think you need that to
filter message by subject or sender, as messages with non-ASCII
characters are encoded with q-encoding like this:

=?iso-8859-1?Q?

http://www.phpclasses.org/mimeparser

Thank you