How to Retrieve Emails from Gmail using PHP IMAP

In this article, you will learn how to retrieve emails from Gmail using the PHP IMAP.

Email is the quickest and most important form of communication. We can easily access it from every communication device. It has great importance for small and large organisations. Every day, they deal with hundreds or thousands of emails. They may also demand to read the emails from their applications. Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. Clients can get to Gmail on the web and utilise a third-party program that synchronises email content through POP or IMAP protocols.

PHP provides an IMAP function to access emails from a remote web server to the local end user client. IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. It is an Internet standard protocol used to access email messages from a mail server. This provides functionality to access the email box from multiple clients and create a web-based email client. There are more than 70 different functions starting with imap_* provided by PHP.

Configuration of IMAP in the PHP server

Before using IMAP in your script, make sure that the IMAP library is installed on your server and enabled in the configuration file. This is by default provided with the WAMP server. You can easily check this in the 'php.ini' file. For this, run the following script and check which ini file is assigned in 'Loaded Configuration File'.

<?php php_info(); ?>

Open the 'php.ini' file and search for the line number to load the imap.

;extension=imap

If the extension is commented like above, remove the semicolon like this and restart the WAMP server to make this effective.

extension=imap

You can check whether IMAP is configured or not using the following code.

if (! function_exists('imap_open')) {
  echo "Error: IMAP is not configured.";
  exit();
} 

It is also necessary to enable IMAP in the Gmail account. For this, go to Gmail Settings->Forwarding and POP/IMAP and enable the IMAP checkbox.

PHP IMAP Functions

These are the IMAP functions with descriptions that we will use in the script to access emails from the Gmail account.

PHP imap_open() function

The most commonly used function is imap_open(). This allows you to create the connection object with the mail server. This requires the following parameters-

imap_open($mailbox, $username, $password)

$mailbox- It consists of the mailbox path of the server.
$username- It contains the username of the mail account.
$password- It contains the password for the mail account.

Example- Connect to GMAIL Account

imap_open('{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX','username','password');

The above code opens an IMAP connection to the GMAIL server named imap.gmail.com on port 993. It also passes along with a username and password as the second and third arguments. If you want to connect to the Yahoo account, the IMAP connection code is-

imap_open('{imap.mail.yahoo.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX','username','password');

You can also connect to the local mail server using the following code.

imap_open('{localhost:993/imap/ssl}INBOX','username','password');

PHP imap_search() function

This function returns messages in an array matching the given search criteria.

imap_search($stream, $criteria)

$stream- It is the IMAP connection object returned by the imap_open() function.
$criteria- These are the search criteria delimited by the spaces. It has some pre-defined constants, like ALL, ANSWERED, BODY, BCC, CC, etc.

PHP imap_fetch_overview() function

It reads an overview of the information in the headers of a given message.

imap_fetch_overview($stream, $sequence)

$stream- It is the IMAP connection object returned by the imap_open() function.
$sequence- It is a message sequence description.

PHP imap_fetchbody() function

It is used to fetch a particular section of the message body.

imap_fetchbody($stream, $number, $section)

$stream- It is the IMAP connection object returned by the imap_open() function.
$number- It is the number of returned messages.
$section- It is the message part number delimited by the period.

PHP IMAP Example

Here is the simple PHP program for retrieving emails from the GMAIL account. In the search criteria, we have passed the keyword 'JOB' to fetch all mails having the keyword 'JOB' in the subject.

<html>
<head>How to Retrieve Emails from Gmail using PHP IMAP</head>
<body>
<h1>Gmail Email Inbox using PHP with IMAP</h1>
<?php
    if (! function_exists('imap_open')) {
        echo "IMAP is not configured.";
        exit();
    } else {
?>
<div class="container">
    <?php 
	/* IMAP Connection code with GMAIL IMAP */
	$imap_conn = imap_open('{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX', 'username', 'password') or die('Cannot connect to Gmail: ' . imap_last_error());
	
	/* SET email subject filter criteria */
	$inbox = imap_search($imap_conn, 'SUBJECT "JOB"');
	
	if (! empty($inbox)) {
	?>
    <table class="table table-striped">
	<?php
	foreach ($inbox as $email) {
		// Get email header information
		$overview = imap_fetch_overview($imap_conn, $email, 0);
		// Get email body
		$message = imap_fetchbody($imap_conn, $email, '2');
		$date = date("d F, Y", strtotime($overview[0]->date));
	?>
	<tr>
		<td>
		<?php echo $overview[0]->from; ?>
		</td>
		<td>
		<?php echo $overview[0]->subject; ?> - <?php echo $message; ?>
		</td>
		<td>
		<?php echo $date; ?>
		</td>
	</tr>
	<?php
	} 
	?>
	</table>
<?php
 } 
 // Close imap connection
 imap_close($imap_conn);
}
?>
</div>
</body>
</html>

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