How can i recognise new new mail? - pop3

csahin

i can get mails from my pop3 server and display them but i can't recognise if a mail is new or not.

i code as:
$header=imap_header($mbox,$num);
$header->Recent;

and Recent flag is N for all mails. How can i recognise new mail?

Anon

Hi!

If you use pop3 protocol, then you can't get new/recent etc.. mails. Because pop3 doesn't support these flags. You should IMAP instead POP3.

Arts

csahin

by using telnet for connecting pop3 server i can get result as:

##################################
top 7 0
+OK Top of message follows
Return-Path: <zisik@hede.hodo>
Received: from localhost (zisik@hede.hodo)
by hede.hodo (8.9.3/8.8.7)
with ESMTP id QAA28598
for <cagatay@hede.hodo>; Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:34:27 +0300
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2000 16:34:27 +0300 (EEST)
From: <zisik@hede.hodo>
To:cagatay@hede.hodo
Subject: selam
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.10.10007171633100.28594-100000@hamsi.cs.deu.edu.tr>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Status: RO
##################################

as u see above status is RO. it is empty for a new mail. can i get this header text and parse status value by php?

Anon

Thats not entirely true, with a bit of trickery you can get the status of whether or not a message has been read from a POP server.
the \\"Status: \\" line of an email does not have an \\"R\\" on it if it hasn\\'t been read, ie: the POP3 command \\"RETR\\" hasn\\'t been called on that message.

You might ask, \\"well how to I get that status without using the RETR command?\\" You can use the \\"TOP\\" command which will only return the header (and a specified number of lines of the body) by doing this, you can effectivly get the message, while tricking the POP server into not setting the \\"Status: R\\" flag, allowing you to check whether it has been read or not without setting the Read flag yourself.

You would have to write your own POP3 functions to do the TOP command because the imap library doesn\\'t have support for the POP3 TOP command. Infact, the POP functions shouldn\\'t ever have been lumped in with the imap library, and neither should the nntp functions.