I built support system (web) where my helpdesk can open new tickets/issues.
I want my clients to be able to send email with the issue text and file attache, to specific email address, and new ticket will be opened in my system.
For that I need to know how to scan the folder and how to add the email data to my DB.
what do I need to look for, in the internet, for that? what is the subject?
(I'm using PHP)
As the other's have commented, it's likely a larger task than you're ready to handle. But it doesn't hurt to try.
If I was tasked with the job, I'd take advantage of Gmail (for it's spam reducing features and large storage) to accept incoming email. From there, you simply need to setup a script that connects to your email account and processes the email for storage in your database.
Normally I recommend a solid library for making the job easier and cleaner, but I have a suspicion that you may not be familiar with OOP. If you at least know how to utilize classes, then check out Github:
https://github.com/search?l=PHP&q=imap&ref=searchresults&type=Repositories
Otherwise, if you're new and don't mind writing something "messy" then the following should at least point you in a good direction:
Connecting & retrieving emails for IMAP:
http://www.php.net/imap
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imap-open.php
Fetching/processing attachments:
(note that attachments are part of the email body)
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imap-fetchstructure.php
Storing attachments (in the filesystem):
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mkdir.php
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.file-put-contents.php
There's plenty of Googling left for you to do. So go forth and make a lot of mistakes. Read the manual. Kick yourself for not having read it sooner, then go make more mistakes. Isn't that how most of us learn?
The first thing that comes to mind is to pop the most recent emails if you have pop3 set up or use imap functions. I did something similar to this using c# using openpop.net. So that could be a starting point.
You can use this method, using the cURL to fetch the emails from Gmail server through feed atom. XML response will return and we can convert it to HTML.
http://www.code4share.net/items/get-unread-email-in-gmail-by-php/XRGXVVh.html
Related
I would like to read a data file (such as csv or txt) and mail it using PHP. I would like to be able to have at 5 minute pause in between each send of data. I would also like to use the email field as the senders email. Any help would be appreciated.
Each data chunk will contain:
name
email
address
city
state
zip code
phone
comments
I'm guessing you want to write a newsletter application, so proceeding under that assumption:
You are probably not going to find this answer very helpful, but you should really consider using a newsletter service instead of writing your own code. The reason for this is that sending newsletters requires a LOT more effort and different skills than writing a simple script.
For example, but not exclusively:
Setting up a mailserver correctly.
Taking care about the reverse DNS.
Managing digital signatures (DKIM) for your mail.
Subscribing and tracking sender feedback loops.
Tracking and avoiding DNSBL blocking lists for your server.
etc.
If you really want to write your own code, you have been warned. Take a look at str_getcsv() and SwiftMailer and don't be surprised if you get headaches from this project.
I have an inbox with 5000+ emails saying that somebody has signed up. Within the body of the email is their email address and name which I want to store in a database.
Q) How can I get this into a database? Ideally mysql.
Ideally I would like to do this in a PHP which I am most familiar with.
I am using iRedMail with: OpenLDAP
UPDATE: since posting the question I have already written the actual email parser using Plan Cake Email Parser, literally took 5 mins once I found this.
UPDATE 2:
To make things easier I have moved all of the emails I want in the database into a separate IMAP folder.
But when I do a search it returns nothing: find /var/vmail -name 'Subscribers' -type d –
UPDATE 3:
Another alternative is that I already have the emails downloaded in my email client locally using Thunderbird Windows 7. When I check my Profiles I can see 3 files related to:
Subscribers.msf
Subscribers-1
Subscribers-1.msf
The real tricky part isn't parsing the emails, but getting the emails from your server. There are three ways I can think of doing this:
Use php's imap library http://php.net/manual/en/book.imap.php. I personally haven't worked with it very much but since you're just fetching all emails, it might be useful. The downside is that you'll end up fetching all of your other mails as well.
Use a 3rd-party service to handle the imap and expose your email via a simpler REST interface. Ideally you'd want to search for a key term (maybe "user signed up") and then parse it.
Use offlineimap to download all the emails as a Maildir and store it localy. Now you can use PHP to search all the emails and it'll be faster and easier to test the version here.
As for parsing, I personally recommend using grep to find the mails that contain the information you want to extract, and awk to convert this information into a CSV file. You can do text processing using PHP but it's far simpler and cleaner to do it with these tooks.
You can now easily push the data into MySQL.
Is this possible without having to first create a physical file on the server?
Initially I had to make a php page that would email each week information about new members of a site... That was fine I just used a cron job running the php page weekly... Now I've been asked to set up the email so it sends an Excel file of the data automatically... Does anyone know if this would be even possible? and how?
Regards,
Vinoth S
Yes, this is entirely possible. Libraries such as PHP Excel allow you to construct spreadsheets in memory without writing anything to disk. Libraries like Swiftmailer allow you to easily add attachments to e-mails from memory. Simply combine the two to do what you want.
Theoretically, one could create the email attachment by creating a carefully crafted email message. And then carefully constructing a document. This might mean breaking some of the email message composition rules if using the php email function.
Seems possible, but the most feasible implementations would be to use the well-suited tools to do it.
Do you know about OpenOffice? I think that can be scripted to run from a server context.
Hey guys. I need help for a project for school. Essentially, I need to write a program that sends newsletters. I can send the newsletters and stuff, but the main issue I'm having is that the newsletter needs to contain things that are contained in a database. How exactly do I draw those things and put them into a newsletter? The bulk of it needs to be in PHP, but Java and stuff can be used, if needed. Also, I cant install anything on my portion of the schools server, so I cant use any CMS's and stuff.
Unless you are writing this for fun and learning, don't do it.
You will get your IP blacklisted and have lots of problems. there are regulations (CAN SPAM etc) and best practices (SPF, domain keys etc) you need to follow if you want this to be successful. Otherwise you will not get any of your mail delivered, and possibly a call form your ISP.
How do you handle unsubscribes? How are you going to handle bounces? Mail loops? Blacklisting of problem addresses? This is not a simple topic.
You would be better off purchasing a email management system;.
Lyris makes one that you can install. There are other free/open source projects as well (majordomo, mailman etc).
Heed these words intrepid e-mailer!
Hey, do you have basic problems with querying your content from your database?
I am new to PHP, but have a decent grasp of things (have not learned classes yet).
The question:
Which to choose? PHPMailer or mail() for my new contact form.
The form is simple:
Your name:
Your email:
Subject:
Body:
I have around 2,000 visitors per day and receive about 10 submissions per day, so I don't need anything too fancy. =)
Miscellaneous questions in my head:
Is PHPMailer going to better protect my Contact Form from CC: injection (major concern)? I already know the anti-spambot display:none CSS trick.
Will PHPMailer save me the step of having to write an email_validator() function?
Will PHPMailer save me any other time of having to write any custom functions?
Thanks! With any luck, I'll be answering questions soon. Lol
Here is all I could think of in one sitting, forgive me if there are any glaring omissions.
Advantages to using PHP's built-in mail function, no external library/wrapper:
You don't need anything outside of
PHP.
You don't need to learn a new API.
You don't have to worry about a PHP
upgrade or such breaking the script.
You don't have to worry about an
updated version not working on your
PHP installation.
You don't have to worry about
potential security vulnerabilities as
a result of using that script.
If it's a simple task, you'll be done
in a few minutes.
Advantages to using an external library/wrapper:
If you need to introduce more
complexity into your emailing, you
can do so quite easily. Adding
attachments, inline images and such
are not much fun using PHP plain mail
function. External libraries (at
least the good ones) have a more
OOPish API. Adding an attachment can be as easy as $message->addAttachment($file); without having to play around with headers, etc.
External libraries better hide the
ugly complexities of tasks such as
adding attachments, character
encodings and inline images.
Using a library now will save you the
hassle of having to learn it in the
future when you do need the
additional complexity/functionality.
External libraries probably (I'm
really not sure which ones, and to
what extent) address certain
vulnerabilities that PHP's mail does
not.
If I can think of anything else, I'll be sure to add it.
This will maybe not really answer all your questions, but it won't hurt either, I guess...
Whatever you want to do, I would not go with mail() : sending a mail is not such an easy task, and using an existing library/framework will always be a good idea : it will solve many problems you probably have not even thought about -- even if you don't need to send lots of mails.
About your specific questions, maybe other answers will say something else and/or get your more informations, but any "good" library created to send mails should deal with those kind of problems... Else, you should probably search for another library ^^
Still, testing a couple of dumb non-addresses will allow you to be 100% sure ;-)
Another solution to be quite sure is to check the source of the library ;-)
In the source of version 2.2.1, you'll find stuff like this :
class.phpmailer.php, function AddAnAddress, line 413, you'll see this :
if (!self::ValidateAddress($address)) {
$this->SetError($this->Lang('invalid_address').': '. $address);
if ($this->exceptions) {
throw new phpmailerException($this->Lang('invalid_address').': '.$address);
}
echo $this->Lang('invalid_address').': '.$address;
return false;
}
And it seems this function is used by the other functions that add an address... So, I suppose there's some kind of email-addresses validation ;-)
That'll answer at least one of your questions ^^
PHPMailer is not the only solution that exists, btw ; there are plenty of others, like, for instance :
Zend_Mail
Rmail for PHP (Formerly known as HTML Mime Mail)
Swift Mailer
As Pascal MARTIN mentioned, sending an email isn't as straight forward and easy as some people just assume it is. To answer your questions directly. Yes PHPMailer does do some validation, but it's not super-advanced, but should be enough for your uses. And PHPMailer will save you some time depending on what custom functions you will need. Some things to consider though:
HTML vs plain text. If the emails are only ever going to you, this probably isn't as big of a deal. But if you're ever sending emails to your users (say a confirmation email) you want to be able to support both HTML and plain text clients. PHPMailer (and Zend_Mail) make this very easy to do.
SMTP. This is another one that is really important if you're sending email to your users, but not so much if it's just an email to your self. Using php's regular mail() function the email will be sent via sendmail, which almost all *nix installs come with out of the box (especially servers). As a result, spam filters aren't very friendly towards it. If you have a regular SMTP server setup with a trusted MX record (or if you have a gmail account) you can send through that using SMTP, which will help reduce the chances of your mail being flagged as spam.
In addition to just PHPMailer Zend_Mail is a good one to check out to (it's part of the Zend Framework). However that may be a bit much for a simple contact form.
PHPMailer is my choice because it allows me to send SMTP e-mails to google without installing any libraries or configuring a mailserver, that way I don't have to worry about spam-related problems.