(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
imap_search — This function returns an array of messages matching the given search criteria
$imap
, string $criteria
, int $flags = SE_FREE
, string $charset = ""
) : array|falseThis function performs a search on the mailbox currently opened in the given IMAP stream.
For example, to match all unanswered messages sent by Mom, you'd use: "UNANSWERED FROM mom". Searches appear to be case insensitive. This list of criteria is from a reading of the UW c-client source code and may be incomplete or inaccurate (see also » RFC1176, section "tag SEARCH search_criteria").
imap由 imap_open() 返回的 IMAP 流。
criteria
A string, delimited by spaces, in which the following keywords are
allowed. Any multi-word arguments (e.g.
FROM "joey smith") must be quoted. Results will match
all criteria entries.
flags
Valid values for flags are
SE_UID, which causes the returned array to
contain UIDs instead of messages sequence numbers.
charsetMIME character set to use when searching strings.
Returns an array of message numbers or UIDs.
Return false if it does not understand the search
criteria or no messages have been found.
Example #1 imap_search() example
<?php
$conn = imap_open('{imap.example.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX', '[email protected]', 'pass123', OP_READONLY);
$some = imap_search($conn, 'SUBJECT "HOWTO be Awesome" SINCE "8 August 2008"', SE_UID);
$msgnos = imap_search($conn, 'ALL');
$uids = imap_search($conn, 'ALL', SE_UID);
print_r($some);
print_r($msgnos);
print_r($uids);
?>
以上例程的输出类似于：
Array
(
[0] => 4
[1] => 6
[2] => 11
)
Array
(
[0] => 1
[1] => 2
[2] => 3
[3] => 4
[4] => 5
[5] => 6
)
Array
(
[0] => 1
[1] => 4
[2] => 6
[3] => 8
[4] => 11
[5] => 12
)
Please be aware about UID of the message.
It is NOT an ID that never change!
If you move your message to another folder in your IMAP account, this UID WILL CHANGE.
So if your message has UID = 100 (in INBOX folder) and you move it to some subfolder and then back to INBOX, it's new UID in INBOX will be 101.
utf-8 charset isn't supported on outlook 365. So you might get a false return value here, if you pass that charset.
If email subject is encoded than use encoding charset and option in search to find something.
Mail Header:
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?XYZ?=
<?php imap_search($inbox,'SUBJECT "'.$keyword.'"', SE_FREE, "UTF-8"); ?>
This is the correct way to use the imap_search with ON "date"
$date = date("j F Y");
$emails = imap_search($inbox,'ON "'.$date.'"' );
imap_search function is not fully compatible with IMAP4. the c-client used as of now supports only IMAP2 and some search criterion will not be available for use such as "OR"
So a php code similar to:
$inbox = imap_open('{imap.example.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX', '[email protected]', 'pass123', OP_READONLY);
$search_string = 'SUBJECT "FedEx" OR SUBJECT "USPS"';
$emails = imap_search($inbox, $search_string);
will throw an error saying "Unknown search criterion"
observations and reference:
PHP source trace:(ref: https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/ext/imap/php_imap.c)
/ext/imap/php_imap.c -> line no : 4126
imap_search => line no : 4148
c-client library source trace:
src/c-client/mail.c -> line no : 3973
internal.txt -> line no : 1919 => mail_criteria()
criteria IMAP2-format search criteria string
WARNING: This function does not accept IMAP4 search criteria.
IMAP2 RFC1064 => [ref: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1064] [page: 13]
IMAP4 RFC2060 => [ref: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2060.html] [section: 6.4.4]
Note:
The core search functionality in a core module(IMAP) is still not available in PHP. Hope this will be brought to the developer community's attention...
about my previous note:
<<the second parameter about Criteria does not work well on ON criterion.
In facts if I wish to put parameters from $_get into the format Day-Month-Year (01-01-14 for example) will return Unknown criterion etc.
Probably is not the right format ?
Even with for example Thu-Jan-2014 get the same message. >>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now works ;)
Just to pass not a date string into criteria parameter but a timestamp returned by mktime function, where you can put your date string.
Solution for any date/time criterion is a unix timestamp.
the second parameter about Criteria does not work well on ON criterion.
In facts if I wish to put parameters from $_get into the format Day-Month-Year (01-01-14 for example) will return Unknown criterion etc.
Probably is not the right format ?
Even with for example Thu-Jan-2014 get the same message.
the function "imap_search" not work for some mails , maybe that because header syntax or some bug .
thanks a lot
Hi,
be aware, that imap_search() does NOT (as you may exspect) return an empty array, if nothing was found!
As the manual says, it returns FALSE.
Do not test the result like "count($array)" as I did.
This gives you 1 for an empty result. Took me an hour to found out why :-( RTFM
It's not possible to find strings containing double quotes using this function.
For example, if you got a message named : Hello, this is "Bob"
You can try :
imap_search($inbox, 'SUBJECT "Hello, this is "Bob""')
Or
imap_search($inbox, "SUBJECT 'Hello, this is \"Bob\"'")
But both are false, because you did not escape double quotes in the first case, and you can NOT use simple quotes in the imap_search criteria in the second case.
The real problem is that you cannot use simple quotes to surround your criteria in the 2nd argument of imap_search, after SUBJECT.
To set your own CHARSET, which is useful if you are dealing with Chinese Japanese and Korean queries.
<?php imap_search($inbox,'BODY "'.$keyword.'"', SE_FREE, "UTF-8"); ?>
The date format for e.g. SINCE is, according to rfc3501:
date = date-text / DQUOTE date-text DQUOTE
date-day = 1*2DIGIT
; Day of month
date-day-fixed = (SP DIGIT) / 2DIGIT
; Fixed-format version of date-day
date-month = "Jan" / "Feb" / "Mar" / "Apr" / "May" / "Jun" /
"Jul" / "Aug" / "Sep" / "Oct" / "Nov" / "Dec"
date-text = date-day "-" date-month "-" date-year
So a valid date is e.g. "22-Jul-2012" with or without the double quotes.
I haven't found any documentation of the allowed date formats, but (for example) "14 May 2012" works.
// Find UIDs of messages within the past week
$date = date ( "d M Y", strToTime ( "-7 days" ) );
$uids = imap_search ( $mbox, "SINCE \"$date\"", SE_UID );
imap_search() always returns false when op_silent flag is set in the connection parameters.
This search looks for messages matching ALL criteria, not ANY criteria. For example the search
imap_search($mailbox,'FROM "user" TO "user"')
Will return message that have "user" in both the from and to headers, but not messages with "user" in either the from or to header.
imap_search() only supports IMAP2 search criterias, because the function mail_criteria() (from c-client lib) is used in ext/imap/php_imap.c for parsing the search string.
IMAP2 search criteria is defined in RFC 1176, section "tag SEARCH search_criteria".
imap_search() return false if it does not understand the search condition or no messages have been found.
$emails imap_seach($mbox, "UNDELETED SENTSINCE 01-Jan-2002");
if($emails === false)
echo "The search failed";