In php imap_num_msg not count how many mails are in inbox if there are forwarded mails. Also imap_headerinfo not display them.
I there a method to do that?
If you are having problems reading the headers, perhaps some of your messages are not correctly formatted. That may also explain why other functions, such as imap_num_msgs are not giving the expected answer.
If it is happening with forwarded messages, perhaps whatever is forwarding the messages is trashing the headers in the process. That is much more likely to happen if they are being forwarded by some kind of custom script, than if they are forwarded by a proper mail server.
Related
I'm confused about how mail works in PHP and CakePHP.
1.) What is the difference between sending an email either using the PHP mail function / CakePHP email helper or SMPTP as shown here: http://book.cakephp.org/1.3/en/view/1290/Sending-A-Message-Using-SMTP as the outcome looks the same?
2.) To specify who the email is coming from, you pass in the email in the header, but you can put whatever you want, so what is stopping you from just putting in anything? like yourbank.com? mail('you#gmail.com', "Subject", "Message", "From: <dave#yourbank.com>"); I just tried it and it worked fine and I couldn't find out anyway in Gmail to see if it didn't come from dave at yourbank.com...
Hopefully I can get some light on these two questions. Thanks.
1). CakePHP has a bunch of helpers & functionality implemented to make life easier when developing applications. As you've discovered, Cake has mail functionality. I suggest reading this whole page http://book.cakephp.org/2.0/en/core-utility-libraries/email.html (It's 2.0 not 1.3, so please not there have been some big alterations between the two versions). The article covers in depth on why you may configure something in a particular manner.
CakePHP is using the default mail function with PHP. It's just allow you to incorporate views into the content and configure the outgoing mail in a much easier manner.
2) As for putting in potentially any email address within the From Header.... this can potentially fall under the category of Email Spoofing, essentially sending an email when it's not authorized from the source (From Header). Again this links back to configuring specific mail servers.
By default mail clients and generally setup to prevent spam and junk, this is done by taking a large amount of steps. Some may be..
Keyword checking, (Checking the contents of an email for any
keywords classified as spam).
Header checking, <--- This is the one that answers your
question.
Essentially... headers are examined and checked to see if the server that the mail was sent from has the authority to use the given from address.
As I don't have enough technical knowledge, i'll throw a few pages your way which discuss setting up records against your DNS/Domain so emails are validated correctly and not put within spam folders.
http://www.ipswitch.com/support/imail/guide/imailgsv8.1/Appendix%20A%20dns4.html
http://help.postageapp.com/kb/application-features/dkim-and-spf-setup-and-validation
How to properly set up DNS SPF records?
I hope my jumbled ramblings make some sort of sense.
Question 1: PHP mail function uses your own server's built in email functionality to send email. If you use SMTP, you're connecting to another server (eg. Google's mail servers) and using that server to send the email.
CakePHP's email component can use either PHP mail, or SMTP, depending on how you configure it.
The outcome is basically the same in many respects. Which way is best for you will depend on your set up, the volume of email you're sending, whether your own server has any restrictions with regards to sending mail, etc. If you Google "PHP mail versus SMTP" or similar, then you'll get some info to help you decide which is best for you.
If you're not sending much email, eg. if you're just wanting to send the results of an enquiry form that gets submitted a few times each day, then just use PHP mail and don't worry about it.
Question 2: Although email programs put various measures in place to make sure mail is legitimate, basically nothing stops fake emails completely. You can send Fake email. Check out this site: http://deadfake.com/Send.aspx and in particular, their FAQ section: http://deadfake.com/FAQ.aspx
Spam filters do their best to catch fake emails, but ultimately it's up to the end user to keep their wits about them, especially with banking emails!
What would be the best way to manage the emails bounces/errors if you are building a web-mass-mailing software ? I plan to use PHP for that.
Before someone start screaming, yes, the lists will be from valid customers who have opt-in.
I know there are desktop software or third party website that can manage such things. I would like to display it with a design similar to the current CMS's visual and be accessible in there.
If the only solution is to connect to a mail server and read the bouncing back messages, then I will head that way. Then, how would you parse the data to flag that email as "invalid"?
Thank you
One possible thing you could do aside from having a PHP script read mail from a pop/imap server would be to pipe incoming mail for a certain address to a php script. See Google
You would then read the entire contents of the message in by doing something like $email = file_get_contents('php://stdin'); I've installed the php extension mailparse to assist in parsing RFC emails, but there are other options available. You don't even necessarily have to use anything to parse the message.
Once you have the message, there are a number of indicators you can use to try to flag a message as a bounch. First, see the Wikipedia article about Non Delivery Reports, specifically Format and RFC 6522 - The Multipart/Report Media Type for the Reporting of Mail System Administrative Messages. You can also check for common headers in the message such as X-Failed-Recipients or Diagnostic-Code.
Once you've determined a message as a bounce in the PHP mail processor, you can take appropriate action and set a flag in the database related to that email. Mind you, some errors may not mean the address is no good. For example, if a mail server is down for a few days, your MTA may give up, but it doesn't mean the address is no good. Also a user's mailbox could be full.
It wouldn't be a bad idea to log a copy of the bounced message so it could be checked by a person if necessary to diagnose an issue or reverse the flagging or a particular email address.
Here are some additional references:
http://forums.theplanet.com/lofiversion/index.php/t89873.html (note Improvement possibility 2)
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5700034/how-do-i-process-a-bounce-email-to-find-the-error-code
Bounce Email handling with PHP?
Hope that helps.
I am facing a problem with mail delivery. My project is based on PHP application. I am using smtp to send mails . A group mail is sent from a email tool. If by any chance any one of the email address format withing the recipient group is incorrect (ex dora#yahoo) , then the email fails to get delivered.
What actually is blocking the email? Is it due to some PHP inbuilt mail function? Or does the smtp blocks it?
Please help me guys to solve this issue.
First off, your question is very vague. I assume you do not get any error message when your script executes. Here is how I would handle this:
First thing to do is make sure your error handling is set to display
errors.
Reproduce the error -> run the script, if possible from the command-line with php -f scriptname.php and send it malformatted emails.
Either fix the script inline, or possibly better, ensure that emails that reach reach script have been validated. There are many php tools available for this.
If you just need a quick fix, php's native filter_var could be of some help.
Last but not least, consider keeping a 'testscript' available that reproduces the steps you did above. You do not want to go through all this every time this thing chokes, and as my hero the great rms once said, if a job is worth doing once it is worth doing a tool that does the job for you.
Good-luck!
my problem got solved. Actually the problem was due to one invalid email address present in the group of recipients.
for those who use phpmailer, and love it, I have a question about getting server response information, if possible.
The limit I've seen is that I can send an email, but there's no way to get a post-message-sent response from the mail server. I am running my own mail server, and I usually watch the maillog file to see what comes back. And there's some interesting responses from places like yahoo, cox, and other mail servers.
Has any one done anything cool to capture such responses, and tie them back to phpmailer events?
The only recourse I can come up with is to log the entries to the maillog into a database, and somehow match the to= and time sent to any emails I send out using phpmailer. But I find that's not quite accurate.
So, I'm open to any ideas.
You should look at message IDs; any bounces should contain the original. You can use custom headers to add another unique identifier, but there's no guarantee you'll get it back in a bounce. Failing that, you need to use VERP addressing in order to identify bounced messages accurately, and you can set that explicitly via the Sender property in PHPMailer.
Alright, this may take a moment or two to explain:
I'm working on creating an Email<>SMS Bridge (like Teleflip). I have a few set parameters to work in:
Dreamhost Webhosting
PHP 5 (without PEAR)
Postfix
MySQL (If Needed)
What I have right now, is a catch-all email address that forwards the email sent to a shell account. The shell account in turn forwards it to my PHP script.
The PHP script reads it, strips a few Email Headers in an effort to make sure it sends properly, then forwards it to the number specified as the recipient. 5551234567#sms.bridge.gvoms.com of course sends an SMS to +1 (555) 123-4567.
This works really well, as I am parsing the To field and grabbing just the email address it is sending to. However, what I realized that I did not account for is multiple recipients. For example, an email sent to both 5551234567 and 1235554567 (using the To line, the CC line, or any combination of those).
The way email works of course, is I get two emails received, end up parsing each of them separately, and 5551234567 ends up getting the same message twice.
What is the best way to handle this situation, so that each number specified in TO and CC can get one copy of the message.
In addition, though I doubt its possible: Is there a way to handle BCC the same way?
If you check the headers of the mail, you should find a Message-ID field (according to RFC2822 - section 3.6.4). So you could test if you have already sent an SMS for a mail with the same Message-ID & phone number to prevent sending the same message to the same number twice.
Why not use something like imap to check the catch-all mailbox, loop through the messages and then delete them once finished? That way you don't need to forward them to a seperate account.
Stupid dirty solution: parse all recipients from the mail, then send them SMS, then put em all into temporary table with md5 of message text. And check all incoming mails against this table.
Although wimvds had the best answer here, I found out elsewhere that Dreamhost includes a "X-DH-Original-To" header in the way I'm running it through the system. Using this, I'm able to send to each number individually upon receipt of the email without checking it against a database. This should also work with Blind Carbon Copy (I don't know the specifics of how email works enough to tell you how that works).