Catchall POP to MySQL Table?

jonno946

Hi everyone,

I have made a user PM system that allows users to 'Private Message' other users. When a user submits a 'Private Message' to another user, a new record is added into 'table_pm'.

Pretty basic, i know, but however, i was wondering if i can advance that a little by not only accepting 'Internal Messages', but emails.

I have a catchall email in place that collects all email to the domain to one POP mail account. However, i want all email to that POP account uploaded into a mysql database, so, when a user loggs in, it appears they have an proper private email address in a web based form.

Can anyone inform me of a way i can automatically upload email data from my POP catchall account to a mysql table?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and please, i am kind of a newbie so please explain in a newbie form:p lol.

Thanks

Jonathan

Anon

Jonathan,

All the pop mail facilities are available in the IMAP section of PHP. You will need to make sure that your system has IMAP compiled in as I don't think it's compiled in as standard.

Also, you'll need to be a little wary of several points.
1. How are you going to handle largish attachments (i.e. what's it going to do to you data storage requirements)
2. My understanding is that you will need to use a BLOB data type for you mail text if there are any attachments. These have there own pecularities.

In general, your flow should be something along the lines of:

Connect to mailbox: imap_open()
Retrieve the header info: imap_headerinfo(). This header info should match to your own user.
Check the structure of the message and / or retrieve the message body for storage.
imap_fetchstructure() / imap_body().
Store all the necessary info in you database.

On retrieval,
1. Fetch the message header so your user knows who the message is from.
2. Either fetch the individual body sections and decode them if you have stored the parts separately or, fetch the body of the messgae back, parse it to figure out the section breaks, then decode it and present.

All in this isn't the easiest of tasks. There is a great c-based utility call Munpack, mpack which does a v. fast job of mail decoding etc.

CHeers

Justin