Re: Help Reading from a POP3 Mail Server

On Fri, 2018-12-07 at 09:12 +0700, Yeni Setiawan wrote: > Hi John, > I'm wondering why didn't you use IMAP functionality to access POP3 server? > Despite its name, it can be used to access POP3 too. > > http://uk.php.net/manual/en/function.imap-open.php > > It's pretty easy and straightforward. > > On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 8:56 AM John <john.iliffe@iliffe.ca> wrote: > > I am trying to get e-mails one at a time from a pop3 mail server. I can > > open > > > > the pop3 socket on port 110 using > > > > > > > > fsockopen(tcp://127.0.0.1, 110, $errno, $errstr) > > > > > > > > and I have no problem logging on to the mail account and issuing the LIST > > and > > > > RETR commands. > > > > > > > > BUT getting the actual email has me stumped. Using fgets() works OK IF I > > can > > > > tell it how many lines to expect. If not, it runs off the end of the file > > and I > > > > have to cancel the job manually. If I use the code in the fread() > > documentation > > > > it does the same thing: > > > > > > > > $message = ""; > > > > while (! feof($mail_sock)) > > > > { > > > > $message .= fread($mail_sock, 8192); > > > > } > > > > > > > > hangs at the end of the email and I need to cancel manually. Putting an echo > > > > command right after the fread() statement shows that the entire message > > arrives > > > > correctly before it hangs. > > > > > > > > I have tried checking for the ".\r\n" standard pop3 EOF indicator and > > breaking > > > > out of the while loop when I find it but that is unstable, that combination > > > > occurred during testing in a random email. Same thing happened using > > fgets() > > > > before I started trying fread(). > > > > > > > > For completeness, stream_get_contents($mail_sock, 8192) also fails with the > > same > > > > overrun problem and I can't see the actual data to set an EOF trap. > > > > > > > > I thought maybe the problem would be that the socket was blocking so I > > framed > > > > the fread() call as: > > > > > > > > stream_set_blocking($mail_sock, false); > > > > while (! feof($mail_sock)) > > > > { > > > > $message .= fread($mail_sock, 8192); > > > > > > > > echo "\n" . $message; > > > > } > > > > stream_set_blocking($mail_sock, true); > > > > > > > > This results in a runaway read of the same email over and over and the > > programme > > > > needs to be cancelled manually. Obviously, the feof() command is inactive > > in > > > > this situation but I don't know why. (bug???) > > > > > > > > However, if I remove the while loop and run it, I sometimes get the first > > line > > > > of the email and sometimes nothing; that is, the fread() command doesn't > > wait > > > > for the server to respond. > > > > > > > > One workaround that I found was to set the socket timeout to a fairly short > > > > value and most of the time this works. Unfortunately the server > > occasionally > > > > doesn't respond within the short timeout and the e-mail is truncated. > > Longer > > > > timeouts (like 30 seconds) create throughput problems for the application. > > > > > > > > At a guess, I suspect that the pop3 server doesn't send any indication at > > the > > > > end of each e-mail, just stops sending, but I can't prove that and I can't > > think > > > > of a reliable way to deal with it. > > > > > > > > Does anyone have any suggestions? I've been playing with this for quite a > > while > > > > without any success. :-( > > > > I finally got back to this and I wonder where you downloaded the c-client library and the PHP IMAP extensions from? The University of Washington download link responds with a 404 error when I try to access it, and while the PHP IMAP functions are documents in the PHP manual, they are not present in the version I have installed (PHP 7.2.9), probably because the c-client library isn't installed. I checked the Fedora repository and no luck there either. Any suggestions? Regards, John===============================================