imap_sort() too slow

[flavio_prado]

Hello everyone,

I use imap_sort() to go through POP3 accounts. However, sometimes, when the mailbox is too large, the response is incredibly slow.

I tried sniffing the network to discover the source of the problem and found that when imap_sort() is called for a POP3 server, it downloads the full body & attachs of ALL the messages in the mailbox. Since my POP server and my Web server are on differente machines, this caused the considerably slow response.

Does anyone know a workaround this? I've been developing a sort of custom_imap_sort() that connects to port 110 and download only the 50 first lines of the message through the POP command TOP, but doing it this way requires that I authenticate all over again. Can I access the TCP stream contained in the imap resource?

[azkworld]

I had a similar issue, and have not found a resolution -- yes, pop3 sends the whole message by definition.
We simply installed an IMAP server on port 143 just for this purpose -- it's blocked to outside users (as we want them to actually download and delete emails off the server). Now it's lightning-fast.
There are a bunch of free IMAP servers for all platforms, and a really basic one should do for you. Also, a lot of POP3 servers actually have an option to simultanously function as IMAP, so you may not even have to install anything extra, just enable it.

[flavio_prado]

Hello azkworld

My problem is that my e-mail client needs to connect to a few different free POP3 servers, and they don't belong to me and I can't ask them to install an IMAP server just for my application. =)

Thanks, anyway