Reading Unread POP3 Email

The POP3 protocol does not provide the ability to ask the server which emails are "unread". Furthermore, a pure POP3 server does not even keep this information. Some servers, such as Exchange Server, expose both POP3 and IMAP interfaces. In these cases, information about read/unread status exists on the server, but it is only available via the IMAP protocol. Email clients such as Outlook and Thunderbird keep read/unread information on the client computer. This example demonstrates how UIDLs can be saved to track and read "unread" email.

Download Chilkat Perl Module

use chilkat;

#  The mailman object is used for receiving (POP3)
#  and sending (SMTP) email.
$mailman = new chilkat::CkMailMan();

#  Any string argument automatically begins the 30-day trial.
$success = $mailman->UnlockComponent("30-day trial");
if ($success != 1) {
    print "Component unlock failed" . "\n";
    exit;
}

#  Set the POP3 server's hostname
$mailman->put_MailHost("mail.chilkatsoft.com");

#  Set the POP3 login/password.
$mailman->put_PopUsername("***");
$mailman->put_PopPassword("***");

#  We're keeping a list of already-seen UIDLs in a text file:
#  If this is the first time you're running this example,
#  create an empty text file named "seenUidls.txt"
$saSeenUidls = new chilkat::CkStringArray();
$success = $saSeenUidls->LoadFromFile("seenUidls.txt");
if ($success != 1) {
    print "failed to load seenUidls.txt" . "\n";
    exit;
}

#  Get the complete list of UIDLs on the mail server.

$saUidls = $mailman->GetUidls();

if ($saUidls eq null ) {
    print $mailman->lastErrorText() . "\n";
    exit;
}

#  We don't have set operators (yet) on the StringArray object,
#  so create a new string array object (it's an object, not an actual array)
#  and add the UIDLs from saUidls that aren't already seen.
$saUnseenUidls = new chilkat::CkStringArray();

$n = $saUidls->get_Count();
for ($i = 0; $i <= $n - 1; $i++) {
    if ($saSeenUidls->Contains($saUidls->GetString($i)) != 1) {
        $saUnseenUidls->Append($saUidls->GetString($i));
    }

}

if ($saUnseenUidls->get_Count() == 0) {
    print "No unseen emails!" . "\n";

    exit;
}

#  Download in full the unseen emails:

$bundle = $mailman->FetchMultiple($saUnseenUidls);
if ($bundle eq null ) {
    print $mailman->lastErrorText() . "\n";

    exit;
}

for ($i = 0; $i <= $bundle->get_MessageCount() - 1; $i++) {
    $email = $bundle->GetEmail($i);
    print $email->ck_from() . "\r\n";
    print $email->subject() . "\r\n";
    print "----" . "\r\n";

}

#  We've seen all the emails, save saUidls to "seenUidls.txt"
$saUidls->SaveToFile("seenUidls.txt");