Using IMAP () in PHP to get recent unread emails count

Question

I am trying to get no. of recent unread mails from a gmail account.For this I have installed IMAP in my Ubuntu system and tried some PHP iMAP functions. Here are what i have tried till now.

/* connect to gmail */
$hostname = '{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX';
$username = 'user@gmail.com';
$password = 'user_password';

/* try to connect */
$inbox = imap_open($hostname,$username,$password) or die('Cannot connect to Gmail: ' .    imap_last_error());

Now I am stating all my attempts. NB - I have tried each attempt by sending new mails to the testing email id

Attempt_1: Using imap_search()

$recent_emails = imap_search($inbox,'RECENT');
if ($recent_emails)
   echo count($recent_emails);
else
   echo "false return";
imap_close($inbox);

Now Output of Attempt_1 is "false return";

Attempt_2: Using imap_mailboxmsginfo()

$check = imap_mailboxmsginfo($inbox);
if ($check)
    echo "Recent: "   . $check->Recent  . "<br />\n" ;
else
    echo "imap_check() failed: " . imap_last_error() . "<br />\n";
imap_close($inbox);

Here the output is Recent:0 while I have sent 2 new mails to this id

Attempt_3: using imap_status()

$status = imap_status($inbox, $hostname, SA_ALL);
if ($status)
  echo "Recent:     " . $status->recent      . "<br />\n";
else
  echo "imap_status failed: " . imap_last_error() . "\n";

//Output Recent:0

Attempt_4: Using Using imap_search() Again with parameter NEW

$recent_emails = imap_search($inbox,'NEW');
if ($recent_emails)
   echo count($recent_emails);
else
   echo "false return";
imap_close($inbox);

Output - false return

So Where Am I WRONG? How can I get the recent unread emails count?

Answer 1

This function seems to work:

function CountUnreadMail($host, $login, $passwd) {
    $mbox = imap_open($host, $login, $passwd);
    $count = 0;
    if (!$mbox) {
        echo "Error";
    } else {
        $headers = imap_headers($mbox);
        foreach ($headers as $mail) {
            $flags = substr($mail, 0, 4);
            $isunr = (strpos($flags, "U") !== false);
            if ($isunr)
            $count++;
        }
    }

    imap_close($mbox);
    return $count;
}

Usage:

$hostname = '{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX';
$username = 'user@gmail.com';
$password = 'user_password';

$count = CountUnreadMail($hostname, $username, $password);

I can’t claim full credit for this function. It’s a slightly edited version of sdolgy’s answer to PHP Displaying unread mail count. His version assumed POP mail. This version requires the full $hostname. I tested it with my own gmail account and it correctly reported the number of unread messages I had in my inbox.

PHP Displaying unread mail count has some pretty good reading material. Check it out.

Hope this helps.

UPDATE

From: Does Gmail support all IMAP features?

Gmail IMAP1 is a fairly complete implementation of IMAP, but the following features are currently unsupported:

\Recent flags on messages.

Verfied at: Gmail's Buggy IMAP Implementation

Gmail doesn't handle standard IMAP flags, such as "\Deleted", "\Answered", and "\Recent".

See also: Jyoti Ranjan's answer (below) for a possible solution.