PHP - imap_num_msg() Function

PHP−IMAP functions helps you to access email accounts, IMAP stands for Internet Mail Access Protocol using these functions you can also work with NNTP, POP3 protocols and local mailbox access methods.

The imap_num_msg() function accepts a resource value representing an IMAP stream as a parameter and retrieves the number of the messages in the given mailbox.

Syntax

imap_num_msg($imap_stream);

Parameters

Sr.No	Parameter & Description
1	imap_stream (Mandatory) This is a string value representing an IMAP stream, return value of the imap_open() function.

Return Values

This function returns an integer value representing the number of messages in the mailbox in case of success and a Boolean value FALSE in case of failure.

PHP Version

This function was first introduced in PHP Version 4 and works in all the later versions.

Example

Following example demonstrates the usage of the imap_num_msg() function −

<html>
   <body>
      <?php
         //Establishing connection
         $url = "{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX";
         $id = "tutorialspoint.test@gmail.com";
         $pwd = "cohondob_123";
         $imap = imap_open($url, $id, $pwd);
         print("Connection established...."."<br>");
		 
         //Fetching the number of messages 
         print("Number of messages: ");
         $num = imap_num_msg($imap);
         print($num);
         print("<br>");
		 
         //Closing the connection
         imap_close($imap);   
      ?>
   </body>
</html>

Output

This will generate the following output −

Connection established....
Number of messages: 7

Example

Following is another example of this function −

<html>
   <body>
      <?php
         $url = "{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX";
         $id = "tutorialspoint.test@gmail.com";
         $pwd = "cohondob_123";
         $stream = imap_open($url, $id, $pwd);
         print("Connection established....");
         print("<br>");
		 
         $num = imap_num_msg($stream);
         print("Number of messages: ".$num."\n");

         imap_append(
            $stream, $url
            , "From: sender@test.com\r\n"
            . "To: reciever@test.com\r\n"
            . "Subject: test\r\n"
            . "\r\n"
            . "this is a test message, please ignore\r\n"
         );
         print("<br>");
         print("Number of messages after append: ".imap_num_msg($stream)."\n");
         
         imap_close($stream);
      ?>
   </body>
</html>

Output

This generates the following output −

Connection established....
Number of messages: 10
Number of messages after append: 11

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