I’ve tended to avoid client/server APIs like IMAP or POP for my mail analysis work, because they’re inherently limited to a single account and a lot of the information I’m interested in comes from looking at an entire organization’s data. Mihai Parparita’s work with MailTrends impressed me though, so I’m going to show you how to access Gmail messages using IMAP as an API. I’ll be using a PHP script, since I have an irrational bias against Python. Something about semantically significant whitespace really gets my goat.
I’ve got a demonstration page up at http://funhousepicture.com/phpgmail/. You’ll need to enter your full gmail address and password if you want to try it out there, or you can download the sourcecode and run it on your own server. I’ve also included it inline below. After connecting, it will fetch all of the headers from your account, along with the full content of the first ten messages. This may take a few seconds
You’ll need PHP with support for the IMAP library enabled to use it yourself. I was surprised to find this wasn’t included by default in the OS X distribution, and after some considerable yak shaving trying to get my own copy of PHP compiled, along with all its dependencies, I gave up doing local development and relied on my hosted Linux server instead. Thankfully that worked right out of the box.
<?php
function gmail_login_page()
{
?>
<html>
<head><title>Gmail summary login</title>
<style type="text/css">body { font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 40px;}</style>
</head>
<body>
<div>This page demonstrates how to access your Gmail account using IMAP in PHP. </div><br/>
<div>Enter your full email address and password, and the next page will show a selection of information about your account.</div><br/>
<div>See <a href="http://petewarden.typepad.com/">http://petewarden.typepad.com/</a> for more information.</div><br/>
<hr/><br/>
<div>
<form action="index.php" method="POST">
<input type="text" name="user"> Gmail address<br/>
<input type="password" name="password"> Password<br/>
<br/>
<input type="submit" value="Get summary">
</form>
</div>
<hr/>
</body>
</html>
<?php
}
function gmail_summary_page($user, $password)
{
?>
<html>
<head><title>Gmail summary for <?=$user?></title>
<style type="text/css">body { font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin: 40px;}</style>
</head>
<body>
<?php
$imapaddress = "{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}";
$imapmainbox = "INBOX";
$maxmessagecount = 10;
display_mail_summary($imapaddress, $imapmainbox, $user, $password, $maxmessagecount);
?>
</body>
</html>
<?php
}
function display_mail_summary($imapaddress, $imapmainbox, $imapuser, $imappassword, $maxmessagecount)
{
$imapaddressandbox = $imapaddress . $imapmainbox;
$connection = imap_open ($imapaddressandbox, $imapuser, $imappassword)
or die("Can’t connect to ‘" . $imapaddress .
"’ as user ‘" . $imapuser .
"’ with password ‘" . $imappassword .
"’: " . imap_last_error());
echo "<u><h1>Gmail information for " . $imapuser ."</h1></u>";
echo "<h2>Mailboxes</h2>\n";
$folders = imap_listmailbox($connection, $imapaddress, "*")
or die("Can’t list mailboxes: " . imap_last_error());
foreach ($folders as $val)
echo $val . "<br />\n";
echo "<h2>Inbox headers</h2>\n";
$headers = imap_headers($connection)
or die("can’t get headers: " . imap_last_error());
$totalmessagecount = sizeof($headers);
echo $totalmessagecount . " messages<br/><br/>";
if ($totalmessagecount<$maxmessagecount)
$displaycount = $totalmessagecount;
else
$displaycount = $maxmessagecount;
for ($count=1; $count<=$displaycount; $count+=1)
{
$headerinfo = imap_headerinfo($connection, $count)
or die("Couldn’t get header for message " . $count . " : " . imap_last_error());
$from = $headerinfo->fromaddress;
$subject = $headerinfo->subject;
$date = $headerinfo->date;
echo "<em><u>".$from."</em></u>: ".$subject." – <i>".$date."</i><br />\n";
}
echo "<h2>Message bodies</h2>\n";
for ($count=1; $count<=$displaycount; $count+=1)
{
$body = imap_body($connection, $count)
or die("Can’t fetch body for message " . $count . " : " . imap_last_error());
echo "<pre>". htmlspecialchars($body) . "</pre><hr/>";
}
imap_close($connection);
}
$user = $_POST["user"];
$password = $_POST["password"];
if (!$user or !$password)
gmail_login_page();
else
gmail_summary_page($user, $password);
?>
Pete Warden's blog 
