Building A PHP-Based Mail Client (part 1) (
Page 1 of 7 )
Ever wondered how Web-based mail clients work, or what happens to
your email after you hit the "Send" button? This three-part case study
delves into the wild and wacky world of Web-based email applications, using
PHP's built-in POP3 functions to build an email client suitable for
rerieving POP3 email via a Web browser. In this introductory segment -
connecting to a POP3 server, logging in and out, retrieving message headers
for display, and deleting messages off the server.It's almost hard to believe that, up until a few years ago, putting pen to paper
was still the most common method of corresponding with long-lost relatives or
distant business partners. Today, email is all-pervasive - it has a user base
ranging from doting grandmothers to over-enthusiastic dot-commers - and is, by
far, the fastest, most efficient way to communicate. Arthur C. Clarke once said
that any sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic; with
millions of messages criss-crossing the globe at any given time, email has some
pretty potent magic of its own.
As a developer, email, and the systems
designed to process it, have always fascinated me. Ever since I got my first
email account, I've always found there to be something magical about the process
by which a text message is encoded and bounced around the world from one mail
server to another until it reaches its recipient, thence to be decoded back into
its original form and displayed. And so, when I was offered the opportunity to
work on a Web-based email client a few weeks back, I jumped at it; here, at
last, was my chance to learn a little bit more about what actually happens after
you hit the "Send" button...
As it turned out, building a mail client
wasn't anywhere near as hard as I thought it would be...and with the help of
powerful open-source tools like PHP, the process was simplified considerably.
Over the course of this article, I'm going to demonstrate how, by building a
PHP-based mail client suitable for reading and writing email in any Web
browser.
The goal here is two-fold: to introduce novice and intermediate
programmers to the process of designing and implementing a Web-based
application, with special reference to PHP's mail functions, and to offer road
warriors, network administrators, email buffs and other interested folk a
functional (and fairly good-looking) email solution for use on their corporate
intranet or Web site.
Lofty goals, you scoff? Well, let's
see...
