Perl Requires Chilkat v11.0.0+

Download and Save Email Attachments (POP3)

See more POP3 Examples

Downloads emails from a POP3 mailbox and saves all attachments. Chilkat2 Perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

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

# The mailman object is used for receiving (POP3)
# and sending (SMTP) email.
my $mailman = Chilkat2::MailMan->new;

# Set the POP3 server's hostname
$mailman->MailHost('pop.yourserver.com');

# Set the POP3 login/password.
$mailman->PopUsername('***');
$mailman->PopPassword('***');

# Copy the all email from the user's POP3 mailbox
# into a bundle object.  The email remains on the server.
# FetchAll is a reasonable choice for POP3 maildrops that don't have too many
# emails. For larger mail drops, one might download emails one at a time..
my $bundle = Chilkat2::EmailBundle->new;
my $keepOnServer = 1;
my $headersOnly = 0;
# Irrelevent because we are NOT downloading headers-only
my $numBodyLines = 0;
my $success = $mailman->FetchAll($keepOnServer, $headersOnly, $numBodyLines, $bundle);
if (!$success) {
    print $mailman->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

# The directory path can be relative or absolute.
# This shows a Windows style directory path.  On other operating systems, the path
# would be different..
my $dirPath = 'c:/myAttachments';

my $email = Chilkat2::Email->new;
my $bundleIndex = 0;
my $numMessages = $bundle->MessageCount;

while ($bundleIndex < $numMessages) {
    $bundle->EmailAt($bundleIndex, $email);

    # Save all attachments to the specified directory.
    # The directory is automatically created if it does not yet exist.
    $success = $email->SaveAllAttachments($dirPath);
    if (!$success) {
        print $email->LastErrorText, "\n";
        exit;
    }

    # The OverwriteExisting property controls whether already-existing files
    # are automatically overwritten.  By default, it is set to 1 so that existing
    # files will be overwritten.

    # Setting OverwriteExisting = 0 will cause the attachment-saving methods to generate
    # unique filenames if a file with the same name already exists.  The actual filename(s)
    # saved will be present by calling GetAttachmentFilename for each attachment *after*
    # saving.
    # For example...
    $email->OverwriteExisting(0);
    $success = $email->SaveAllAttachments($dirPath);
    if (!$success) {
        print $email->LastErrorText, "\n";
        exit;
    }

    my $numAttachments = $email->NumAttachments;
    my $attachIndex = 0;
    while ($attachIndex < $numAttachments) {
        # If the attachment filename was changed to prevent overwriting,
        # GetAttachmentFilename will return the new filename.
        print $email->GetAttachmentFilename($attachIndex), "\n";
        $attachIndex = $attachIndex + 1;
    }

    # Attachments can also be saved individually.
    $attachIndex = 0;
    while ($attachIndex < $numAttachments) {
        print 'Original Filename: ', $email->GetAttachmentFilename($attachIndex), "\n";
        $success = $email->SaveAttachedFile($attachIndex, $dirPath);
        if (!$success) {
            print $email->LastErrorText, "\n";
            exit;
        }

        # If OverwriteExisting = 1, the saved filename will always equal the original filename,
        # unless there are characters present in the filename that are not allowed by Windows,
        # such as * ? < > | etc.  In those cases the illegal characters are either removed or replaced
        # with underscore characters to allow the file to be saved.
        print 'Saved Filename: ', $email->GetAttachmentFilename($attachIndex), "\n";
        $attachIndex = $attachIndex + 1;
    }

    $bundleIndex = $bundleIndex + 1;
}