Respond to emails in php?

[compwizard]

Hi, I was wondering... is there a way to respond to incoming emails in php. For example, I want to create an email auto responder in php. Is there a way to do that?

[coiL]

Do you mean an auto-responder for when people send you email via a form, like a contact or feed back form?

[compwizard]

No, I mean if people send an email to a specifc address from their own email account

[deuce868]

if you set up a script on the server to call the php commands. The server would have to detect the email and run the php as the php cannot tell when a new email arrived.

[compwizard]

That is exactly what I need to know.. how do write the script for the server?

[deuce868]

well, you can look at filters that can be triggered like procmail. I haven't done it...just know it is possible. You might start with procmail and see if has instructions for you.

[deuce868]

I just saw this in the advanced forum. It is run by cron, but the links there might help you out some more.

http://www.sitepointforums.com/showt...hreadid=110295

[mr_than]

There are a couple of ways to do this depending on the system you're using.

1) You can use a script (scheduled with cron or whatever) to read a POP/IMAP/whatever mailbox and process the messages as necessary. For a tutorial on doing the POP3 with PHP thing check out www.devshed.com

2) Gijs Van Tulder, who wrote the rather nice article here at SP about hierarchical data storage and processing, has an article on doing exactly what you're asking at his site: http://gvtulder.f2o.org/articles/incoming-mail/

The method discussed is probably the ideal but may not be possible depending on the host, etc.

Have fun.