How to extract mail atachment with PHP? - php

Question

I'm extracting emails from a database where they're stored as strings. I need to parse these emails to extract their attachments. I guess there must already be some library to do this easily but I can't find any.

Answer 1

PHP has a MailParse extension that is a lot faster then using the PEAR alternative which is native PHP.
Here is a library that wraps this extension:
http://code.google.com/p/php-mime-mail-parser/
Example:
// require mime parser library
require_once('MimeMailParser.class.php');
// instantiate the mime parser
$Parser = new MimeMailParser();
// set the email text for parsing
$Parser->setText($text);
// get attachments
$attachments = $Parser->getAttachments();

Answer 2

PEAR::Mail::mimeDecode should do what you're looking for

Answer 3

This could be done using the Zend_Mail component of the Zend Framework
Maybe this example, which can also be found in the documentation helps:
// get the first none multipart part
$part = $message;
while ($part->isMultipart()) {
$part = $message->getPart(1);
}
echo 'Type of this part is ' . strtok($part->contentType, ';') . "\n";
echo "Content:\n";
echo $part->getContent();
I don't know however how you can tell Zend Mail to read from strings, maybe there's some work required to do this, but then you'd have a full-fletched library that does what you want and some more(like reading the subject, etc.).
Edit:
I just had a second look at it and realized that all you have to do is write an own storage implementation(subclass Zend_Mail_Storage_Abstract) which shouldn't be so hard to do.
I think that's the cleanest solution you'll get, albeit a little effort is required to make it work.
If you're looking for a more quick'n'dirty kind of solution someone else might be able to help you.
Hope that helps.

Answer 4

PhpMimeParser - parse multipart mime message(attachments, inline images, base64, quoted-printable) https://github.com/breakermind/PhpMimeParser You can cut mime messages from files, string.
// Load .eml mime message from file
$str = file_get_contents('mime-mixed-related-alternative.eml');
// Format output
echo "<pre>";
// Create object MimeParser
$m = new PhpMimeParser($str);
// Show Emails
print_r($m->mTo);
print_r($m->mFrom);
print_r($m->mBcc);
print_r($m->mCc);
// Show Message
echo $m->mSubject;
echo $m->mHtml;
echo $m->mText;
print_r($m->mInlineList);
// Show Files
print_r($m->mFiles);

Answer 5

E-mail attachments are MIME encoded and added to the message body using headers. The PEAR MIME decode package will do what you need:
http://pear.php.net/package/Mail_mimeDecode

Answer 6

There's a better library out there:
https://github.com/php-mime-mail-parser/php-mime-mail-parser
It is installable via Composer.
Since this has the same name as the one on Google Code that was linked to elsewhere in this SO post, I think it's the successor to it, but I can't tell. The authorship info is harder to find on Google Code, so I cannot confirm it's the same author.
Some sample code (from the project README):
// Include the library first
require_once __DIR__.'/vendor/autoload.php';
$path = 'path/to/mail.txt';
$Parser = new PhpMimeMailParser\Parser();
$Parser->setStream(fopen($path, "r"));
// Loop through all the Attachments
if (count($attachments) > 0) {
foreach ($attachments as $attachment) {
echo 'Filename : '.$attachment->getFilename().'<br />'; // logo.jpg
echo 'Filesize : '.filesize($attach_dir.$attachment->getFilename()).'<br />'; // 1000
echo 'Filetype : '.$attachment->getContentType().'<br />'; // image/jpeg
echo 'MIME part string : '.$attachment->getMimePartStr().'<br />'; // (the whole MIME part of the attachment)
}
}