Building A PHP-Based Mail Client (part 1) - Calling The Exterminator (
Page 6 of 7 )
You'll remember, from the previous pages, that every message in the message list
has a checkbox accompanying it. This box, if checked, indicates that the message
is to be deleted from the mail server.
If you take a close look at
"list.php", you'll see that every checkbox is associated with the $dmsg array;
once the form is submitted, this array will contain the numbers of all the
messages selected for deletion. The "delete.php" script then needs only to
connect to the mail server and iterate through this array, marking the specified
messages for deletion.
Yes, it really is as simple as it sounds - take a
look at the script:
<?
// delete.php - delete messages
// session check
session_start();
if (!session_is_registered("SESSION"))
{
header("Location: error.php?ec=2");
exit;
}
// open POP connection
$inbox = @imap_open ("{". $SESSION_MAIL_HOST . "/pop3:110}",
$SESSION_USER_NAME, $SESSION_USER_PASS) or header("Location:
error.php?ec=3");
// delete specified message numbers
for($x=0; $x<sizeof($dmsg); $x++)
{
imap_delete($inbox, $dmsg[$x]);
}
// clean up and go back to list page
imap_close($inbox, CL_EXPUNGE);
header("Location: list.php");
?>
As always, the first step is to check for the existence of a
valid session. Assuming that exists, a connection is opened to the mail server
and the imap_delete() function, in combination with the contents of the $dmsg
array, is used to mark messages for deletion (if you're familiar with the POP3
protocol, this is equivalent to sending a series of DELE commands to the
server).
It should be noted that imap_delete() merely marks messages for
deletion; it does not actually remove them from the server. In order to actually
erase the marked messages, it's necessary to specify the CL_EXPUNGE argument
while closing the mailbox with imap_close() (an alternative here would be to use
the equivalent imap_expunge() command).
Once all messages have been
deleted, the browser is redirected to the message list. Deleted messages should
now no longer appear in this list.
