download gmail attachements from php

Question

can you please tell , how to download attachments from gmail account using php ? thanks

Answer 1

IMAP Solution

/* connect to gmail */
$hostname = '{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX';
$username = 'davidwalshblog@gmail.com';
$password = 'davidwalsh';

/* try to connect */
$inbox = imap_open($hostname,$username,$password) or die('Cannot connect to Gmail: ' . imap_last_error());

/* grab emails */
$emails = imap_search($inbox,'ALL');

/* if emails are returned, cycle through each... */
if($emails) {

    /* begin output var */
    $output = '';

    /* put the newest emails on top */
    rsort($emails);

    /* for every email... */
    foreach($emails as $email_number) {

        /* get information specific to this email */
        $overview = imap_fetch_overview($inbox,$email_number,0);
        $message = imap_fetchbody($inbox,$email_number,2);

        /* output the email header information */
        $output.= '<div class="toggler '.($overview[0]->seen ? 'read' : 'unread').'">';
        $output.= '<span class="subject">'.$overview[0]->subject.'</span> ';
        $output.= '<span class="from">'.$overview[0]->from.'</span>';
        $output.= '<span class="date">on '.$overview[0]->date.'</span>';
        $output.= '</div>';

        /* output the email body */
        $output.= '<div class="body">'.$message.'</div>';
    }

    echo $output;
} 

/* close the connection */
imap_close($inbox);

You must add to it attachment control and you can read this because from it is this source code http://davidwalsh.name/gmail-php-imap

Answer 2

you could use a php pop or imap client and fetch the mail and extract the attachments from that

Answer 3

As stated by other answerers, an IMAP solution is recommended, and can be found at http://davidwalsh.name/gmail-php-imap. Make sure to check your firewall, and enable the OpenSSL and IMAP in your PHP installation.

http://www.electrictoolbox.com/extract-attachments-email-php-imap/ has excellent code references regarding how to analyze each email's structure using imap_fetchstructure. In the structure of each message lie the attachments. The user contributed notes at http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imap-fetchstructure.php are particularly helpful (as is the documentation).

Basically, you have to

• loop through the structure parts
• determine which of them are attachments
• decode as appropriate.

Different email clients will have slightly different structures, but it's not too hard with a little effort. The data can then be handled however you choose.