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PHP - imap_search() 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_search() accepts a resource value representing an IMAP stream, and a string value representing the search criteria as parameters, searches the mailbox and returns the matched messages in the form of an array.

Syntax

imap_search($imap_stream, $criteria, [$options, $charset]);

Parameters

Sr.No Parameter & Description
1

imap_stream (Mandatory)s

This is a string value representing an IMAP stream, return value of the imap_open() function.
2

criteria (Mandatory)

This is a string value representing the search criteria.
3

options (Optional)

This is a string value representing the optional value SE_UID. On setting the array retuned contains UID’s instead of message sequences.
4

$charset (Optional)

This is a string value representing the MIME character set to use during the search.

Return Values

This function returns an array which contains the message numbers/UID’s representing the matched messages 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 is another example of this 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>");
         print("Results of the search: "."<br>");
         
         $emailData = imap_search($imap, '');
         print_r($emailData);
	    
         //Closing the connection
         imap_close($imap);   
      ?>
   </body>
</html>

This generates the following output −

Connection established....
Results of the search:
Array ( [0] => 1 [1] => 2 [2] => 3 [3] => 4 [4] => 5 [5] => 6 )

Example

Following is another example of this function; this reads the unseen messages in the current inbox −

<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>");
         print("Contents of the matched messages: "."<br>");
         $emailData = imap_search($imap, "UNSEEN");
         foreach ($emailData as $msg) {
            $msg = imap_fetchbody($imap, $msg, "1");
            print(quoted_printable_decode($msg)."<br>");                
         }    
         //Closing the connection
         imap_close($imap);   
      ?>
   </body>
</html>

Output

This will generate the following output −

Connection established....
Contents of the matched messages:
Array ( [0] => 4 [1] => 5 [2] => 6 )
#sample_mail4
#sample_mail5
#sample_mail6

Example

Following is an example of this function with optional parameters −

<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>");
         print("Contents  of the matched messages: "."<br>");
         $data = imap_search($imap, "ALL", SE_UID);
         print_r($data);
    
         //Closing the connection
         imap_close($imap);   
      ?>
   </body>
</html>

Output

This will generate the following output −

Connection established....
Contents of the matched messages:
Array ( 
   [0] => 19 
   [1] => 20 
   [2] => 42 
   [3] => 49 
   [4] => 50 
   [5] => 51 
)
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