how can I fetch a message using a php script?

Question

I want to make it so that I can email a url and a php script or something at that url will take the contents I emailed such as message body and write them into a DB. I know how to write something into a DB but I dont know what to do in order to EMAIL to a url or person and have it pull out the message.

The reason I am thinking of emailing to a url if possible is because this saves me the massive blob of trouble of setting up IMAP and using all that mess. I know this can easily be done with php I just have no idea how.

Answer 1

You cannot send email to a URL, you must use a valid email address.

If you want to read your email from within php to import into a DB, you'll need to communicate to your IMAP/SMTP/POP3 server via a socket connection with the fsockopen() function.

I suggest you download any open source web based mail client such as RoundCube , Squirrel Mail , etc... and examine the source code.

Answer 2

There are quite a lot of options when it comes to receiving email. You'll still need to use an email address to send to but you can forward that email on via an HTTP POST using a couple of options such as cURL scripts or using a third party like CloudMailin .

I wrote a blog post about this in Rails (although the principles apply directly to PHP too without much modification. This is a dup of a couple of other questions but it was asked in a fairly different way hence the answer.