Posted by C. on 03/22/07 14:21

On 22 Mar, 11:18, bill <nob...@spamcop.net> wrote:
> 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.

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