(Perl) Download an IMAP Message Set

Demonstrates how to read a set of IMAP emails.

Note: This example requires Chilkat v11.0.0 or greater.

Chilkat Perl Downloads Perl Module for Windows, MacOS, Linux, Alpine Linux

use chilkat();

$success = 0;

# This example requires the Chilkat API to have been previously unlocked.
# See Global Unlock Sample for sample code.

$imap = chilkat::CkImap->new();

# Connect using TLS.
$imap->put_Ssl(1);
$imap->put_Port(993);
$success = $imap->Connect("imap.example.com");
if ($success == 0) {
    print $imap->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

# Authenticate
$success = $imap->Login("email_account_login","email_account_password");
if ($success == 0) {
    print $imap->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

# Select an IMAP mailbox
$success = $imap->SelectMailbox("Inbox");
if ($success == 0) {
    print $imap->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

# Search for messages with the word "test" in the subject.
$fetchUids = 1;

$messageSet = chilkat::CkMessageSet->new();
$success = $imap->QueryMbx("Subject test",$fetchUids,$messageSet);
if ($success == 0) {
    print $imap->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

# Download the messages in a single call to FetchMsgSet.
# 
# This only makes sense if the number of emails to be downloaded is not too large.  
# For example, you wouldn't want to download 10000 emails in a single call to FetchMsgSet.
# Why? For two reasons:  (1) It could potentially cause an out-of-memory condition, and 
# (2) it would take an extremely large amount of time.  The longer the amount of time,
# the greater the likelihood of some kind of external networking or server problem occuring,
# and if it happens, then you would need to re-download everything from the beginning again.
# For large numbers of emails, it's better to loop over the emails in the message set
# and download/process one at a time as shown here: Download IMAP Messages One at a Time
# Downloading one message at a time makes it possible to resume the downloads rather than restart the entire operation all over again.

# If the message set is reasonable in size, you can download all at once using FetchMsgSet:

print "Number of messages = " . $messageSet->get_Count() . "\r\n";

$bundle = chilkat::CkEmailBundle->new();
$headersOnly = 0;
$success = $imap->FetchMsgSet($headersOnly,$messageSet,$bundle);
if ($success == 0) {
    print $imap->lastErrorText() . "\r\n";
    exit;
}

# Display the Subject and From of each email.
$email = chilkat::CkEmail->new();
$i = 0;
$numEmails = $bundle->get_MessageCount();
while ($i < $numEmails) {
    $bundle->EmailAt($i,$email);

    print $email->getHeaderField("Date") . "\r\n";
    print $email->subject() . "\r\n";
    print $email->ck_from() . "\r\n";
    print "--" . "\r\n";
    $i = $i + 1;
}