PHP - Manual: imap_search

2024-12-22

imap_search

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

imap_search — This function returns an array of messages matching the given search criteria

说明

imap_search(
    IMAP\Connection $imap,
    string $criteria,
    int $flags = SE_FREE,
    string $charset = ""
): array|false

This function performs a search on the mailbox currently opened in the given IMAP stream.

For example, to match all unanswered messages sent by Mom, you'd use: "UNANSWERED FROM mom". Searches appear to be case insensitive. This list of criteria is from a reading of the UW c-client source code and may be incomplete or inaccurate (see also » RFC1176, section "tag SEARCH search_criteria").

参数

imap

IMAP\Connection 实例。

criteria

A string, delimited by spaces, in which the following keywords are allowed. Any multi-word arguments (e.g. FROM "joey smith") must be quoted. Results will match all criteria entries.

ALL - return all messages matching the rest of the criteria
ANSWERED - match messages with the \\ANSWERED flag set
BCC "string" - match messages with "string" in the Bcc: field
BEFORE "date" - match messages with Date: before "date"
BODY "string" - match messages with "string" in the body of the message
CC "string" - match messages with "string" in the Cc: field
DELETED - match deleted messages
FLAGGED - match messages with the \\FLAGGED (sometimes referred to as Important or Urgent) flag set
FROM "string" - match messages with "string" in the From: field
KEYWORD "string" - match messages with "string" as a keyword
NEW - match new messages
OLD - match old messages
ON "date" - match messages with Date: matching "date"
RECENT - match messages with the \\RECENT flag set
SEEN - match messages that have been read (the \\SEEN flag is set)
SINCE "date" - match messages with Date: after "date"
SUBJECT "string" - match messages with "string" in the Subject:
TEXT "string" - match messages with text "string"
TO "string" - match messages with "string" in the To:
UNANSWERED - match messages that have not been answered
UNDELETED - match messages that are not deleted
UNFLAGGED - match messages that are not flagged
UNKEYWORD "string" - match messages that do not have the keyword "string"
UNSEEN - match messages which have not been read yet

flags

Valid values for flags are SE_UID, which causes the returned array to contain UIDs instead of messages sequence numbers.

charset

MIME character set to use when searching strings.

返回值

Returns an array of message numbers or UIDs.

Return false if it does not understand the search criteria or no messages have been found.

更新日志

版本	说明
8.1.0	现在 `imap` 参数接受 IMAP\Connection 实例，之前接受资源(resource)。

范例

示例 #1 imap_search() example


<?php
$imap   = imap_open('{imap.example.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX', 'foo@example.com', 'pass123', OP_READONLY);

$some   = imap_search($imap, 'SUBJECT "HOWTO be Awesome" SINCE "8 August 2008"', SE_UID);
$msgnos = imap_search($imap, 'ALL');
$uids   = imap_search($imap, 'ALL', SE_UID);

print_r($some);
print_r($msgnos);
print_r($uids);
?>

以上例程的输出类似于：

Array
(
    [0] => 4
    [1] => 6
    [2] => 11
)
Array
(
    [0] => 1
    [1] => 2
    [2] => 3
    [3] => 4
    [4] => 5
    [5] => 6
)
Array
(
    [0] => 1
    [1] => 4
    [2] => 6
    [3] => 8
    [4] => 11
    [5] => 12
)

参见

imap_listscan() - Returns the list of mailboxes that matches the given text

add a note

User Contributed Notes 18 notes

down

Anonymous ¶

9 years ago


The date format for e.g. SINCE is, according to rfc3501:

date            = date-text / DQUOTE date-text DQUOTE

date-day        = 1*2DIGIT
                    ; Day of month

date-day-fixed  = (SP DIGIT) / 2DIGIT
                    ; Fixed-format version of date-day

date-month      = "Jan" / "Feb" / "Mar" / "Apr" / "May" / "Jun" /
                  "Jul" / "Aug" / "Sep" / "Oct" / "Nov" / "Dec"

date-text       = date-day "-" date-month "-" date-year

So a valid date is e.g. "22-Jul-2012" with or without the double quotes.

down

mail at nikha dot org ¶

8 years ago


Hi, 
be aware, that imap_search() does NOT (as you may exspect) return an empty array, if nothing was found! 
As the manual says, it returns FALSE.

Do not test the result like "count($array)" as I did. 
This gives you 1 for an empty result. Took me an hour to found out why :-(  RTFM

down

Enriqe ¶

1 year ago


Please be aware about UID of the message.
It is NOT an ID that never change!

If you move your message to another folder in your IMAP account, this UID WILL CHANGE. 

So if your message has UID = 100 (in INBOX folder) and you move it to some subfolder and then back to INBOX, it's new UID in INBOX will be 101.

down

britty dot it at hotmail dot com ¶

6 years ago


imap_search function is not fully compatible with IMAP4. the c-client used as of now supports only IMAP2 and some search criterion will not be available for use such as "OR"

So a php code similar to:
$inbox   = imap_open('{imap.example.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX', 'foo@example.com', 'pass123', OP_READONLY);
$search_string = 'SUBJECT "FedEx" OR SUBJECT "USPS"';    
$emails = imap_search($inbox, $search_string);

will throw an error saying "Unknown search criterion"

observations and reference:

PHP source trace:(ref: https://github.com/php/php-src/blob/master/ext/imap/php_imap.c)
    /ext/imap/php_imap.c -> line no : 4126
    imap_search => line no : 4148

c-client library source trace:
src/c-client/mail.c -> line no : 3973

internal.txt -> line no : 1919 => mail_criteria()
    criteria IMAP2-format search criteria string
    WARNING: This function does not accept IMAP4 search criteria.

IMAP2 RFC1064 => [ref: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1064] [page: 13]
IMAP4 RFC2060 => [ref: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2060.html] [section: 6.4.4]

Note:
The core search functionality in a core module(IMAP) is still not available in PHP. Hope this will be brought to the developer community's attention...

down

james at medbirdie dot com ¶

9 years ago


To set your own CHARSET, which is useful if you are dealing with Chinese Japanese and Korean queries.


<?php imap_search($inbox,'BODY "'.$keyword.'"', SE_FREE, "UTF-8"); ?>

down

joseph dot cardwell at jbcwebservices dot com ¶

10 years ago


imap_search() always returns false when op_silent flag is set in the connection parameters.

down

Steve ¶

5 months ago


It has been noted that imap_search breaks with imap4 syntax.  To do an imap 4 search use curl and send a custom command, then grab the results.  Its best to do a UID search to get the unique IDs to work with later.  Here's an example with a working curl function.

<?php
$host = 'your-server.tld';
$user = 'username';
$pass = 'password';
$folder = 'INBOX';

function send_imap_command($server, $user, $pass, $command, $folder="INBOX")
{   //Send an imap command directly to the imap server

    $result=["response"=>"", "error"=>""];
    $url = "imaps://$server/". rawurlencode($folder);
    $options=[CURLOPT_URL=>$url, CURLOPT_PORT=> 993, CURLOPT_USERNAME=> $user,
        CURLOPT_PASSWORD=> $pass, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER=> true, CURLOPT_HEADER=> true,
        CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST=> $command];
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt_array($ch, $options);

    $result["response"] = curl_exec($ch);
    if(curl_errno($ch)) $response["error"]="Error (". curl_errno($ch) ."): ". curl_error($ch);

    return $result;
}

//Pull out all the emails returned as undeliverable by the remote mail server in the inbox using curl
$response=send_imap_command($host, $user, $pass,
            'UID SEARCH SINCE "01-Jan-2022" (OR FROM "mailer-daemon" FROM "postmaster") (OR SUBJECT "fail" (OR SUBJECT "undeliver" SUBJECT "returned"))',
            $folder);

if($response["error"]!="")
{
    echo $response["error"]."\n";
} elseif (strlen($response["response"])>5){
    //Server returns a string in the form * SEARCH uid1 uid2 uid3 ...  Clean up and create array of UIDs.
    $response["response"]=str_replace("* SEARCH ","",$response["response"]);
    $messages=explode(" ",$response["response"]);
}

print_r($messages);
?>

down

Paula ¶

5 years ago


This is the correct way to use the imap_search with ON "date"

$date = date("j F Y");

$emails = imap_search($inbox,'ON "'.$date.'"' );

down

trimoreau dot yonn at gmail dot com ¶

9 years ago


It's not possible to find strings containing double quotes using this function.

For example, if you got a message named : Hello, this is "Bob"
You can try :
     imap_search($inbox, 'SUBJECT "Hello, this is "Bob""')
Or
     imap_search($inbox, "SUBJECT 'Hello, this is \"Bob\"'")

But both are false, because you did not escape double quotes in the first case, and you can NOT use simple quotes in the imap_search criteria in the second case.

The real problem is that you cannot use simple quotes to surround your criteria in the 2nd argument of imap_search, after SUBJECT.

down

oliver at samera dot com dot py ¶

19 years ago


imap_search() only supports IMAP2 search criterias, because the function mail_criteria() (from c-client lib) is used in ext/imap/php_imap.c for parsing the search string.
IMAP2 search criteria is defined in RFC 1176, section "tag SEARCH search_criteria".

down

-3

Brett ¶

10 years ago


I haven't found any documentation of the allowed date formats, but (for example) "14 May 2012" works.

// Find UIDs of messages within the past week
$date = date ( "d M Y", strToTime ( "-7 days" ) );
$uids = imap_search ( $mbox, "SINCE \"$date\"", SE_UID );

down

-2

admin at rancid-tea dot com ¶

14 years ago


This search looks for messages matching ALL criteria, not ANY criteria. For example the search 

imap_search($mailbox,'FROM "user" TO "user"')

Will return message that have "user" in both the from and to headers, but not messages with "user" in either the from or to header.

down

-1

andrea dot job at libero dot it ¶

7 years ago


the second parameter about Criteria does not work well on ON criterion.
In facts if I wish to put parameters from $_get into the format Day-Month-Year (01-01-14 for example) will return Unknown criterion etc.
Probably is not the right format ?

Even with for example Thu-Jan-2014 get the same message.

down

-1

samy.sadi.contact in gmail ¶

2 years ago


utf-8 charset isn't supported on outlook 365. So you might get a false return value here, if you pass that charset.

down

-4

oliver at samera dot com dot py ¶

20 years ago


imap_search() return false if it does not understand the search condition or no messages have been found.

$emails imap_seach($mbox, "UNDELETED SENTSINCE 01-Jan-2002");
if($emails === false)
  echo "The search failed";

down

-8

Anonymous ¶

7 years ago


about my previous note:

<<the second parameter about Criteria does not work well on ON criterion.
In facts if I wish to put parameters from $_get into the format Day-Month-Year (01-01-14 for example) will return Unknown criterion etc.
Probably is not the right format ?

Even with for example Thu-Jan-2014 get the same message. >>
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now works ;) 

Just to pass not a date string into criteria parameter but a timestamp returned by mktime function, where you can put your date string.

Solution for any date/time criterion is a unix timestamp.

down

-10

tgely ¶

5 years ago


If email subject is encoded than use encoding charset and option in search  to find something.

Mail Header:

Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?XYZ?=

<?php imap_search($inbox,'SUBJECT "'.$keyword.'"', SE_FREE, "UTF-8"); ?>

down

-49

anonymous at anonymous dot ru ¶

8 years ago


the function "imap_search" not work for some mails , maybe that because header syntax or some bug .

thanks a lot

add a note

官方地址：https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.imap-search.php

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PHP官方手册 - 互联网笔记

imap_search

说明

参数

返回值

更新日志

范例

参见

User Contributed Notes 18 notes