Dave is my name - Web Developer Blog based in Hull

Move emails to selected IMAP Folder

Dave — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 23:39:25 +0000

Moving email from one IMAP mailbox folder another is a simple process this short tutorial will show you how.

First create a form with a list the list will be populated with all the mailbox folders using imap_list. Remember you’ll need an open connection to the server first in this example my stream is referenced in $mbox.



 
$list = imap_list($mbox, '{imap.example.org}', "*");
echo "\n";	 
?>

The following code will run as long as a folder has been selected and the form has been submitted. If no folder has been selected nothing will happen.

The selected email is passed to a variable called $mailbox which is passed to a function called imap_mail_move which will copy the email to the desired folder it also request the imap stream and the message number. Since the function copies the email we need to remove it from the current folder, this is easily done by calling imap_expunge which will remove any emails waiting to be deleted.


//move mail to mailbox
if(isset($_POST['moveMail']))
{
	if($_POST['moveMail'] !=''){
		$mailbox = $_POST['moveMail'];
		//move mail to new folder
		@imap_mail_move($mbox,$msgno,$mailbox);
		//delete selected email from current folder
		@imap_expunge($mbox);
	}
} 
?>

Display mailbox folders with IMAP using PHP

Dave — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 22:35:34 +0000

When using IMAP its likely you will want access to the users mailbox so they can view all their folders. This tutorial will explain how display mailbox folders using imap_list.

Before attempting to show the maiilbox folders a connection with the email server needs to be established with imap_open such as:

$mbox = imap_open("{mail.example.com:143/notls/norsh/novalidate-cert}", "sample@example.com","password");

For full details on using imap_open please look at this post Connecting to an imap server using imap_open

To display mailbox folders use the function imap_list it requires 3 parameters first the imap_stream (connection) then the ref should normally be just the server specification as described in imap_open(). The third parameter dictates which folder to look in.

From the PHP manual:

There are two special characters you can pass as part of the pattern: ‘*’ and ‘%’. ‘*’ means to return all mailboxes. If you pass pattern as ‘*’, you will get a list of the entire mailbox hierarchy. ‘%’ means to return the current level only. ‘%’ as the pattern parameter will return only the top level mailboxes; ‘~/mail/%’ on UW_IMAPD will return every mailbox in the ~/mail directory, but none in subfolders of that directory.

Some mail servers separate the mailboxes with } others use ] such as Gmail to remove these from the folder when viewing them a simply preg_match will do the job


//remove  any } characters from the folder
if (preg_match("/}/i", $list[0])) {
	$arr = explode('}', $list[0]);
} 
?>

Also to remove INBOX. from the mailbox name simply do a string replace


//remove INBOX. from the folder name	
$folder = str_replace('INBOX.', '', stripslashes($arr[1]));
?>

The inbox is sometimes the last mailbox in the array so look through the array and if the first folder is not the inbox reverse the array


//check if inbox is first folder if not reorder array
if($folder !== 'INBOX'){
	krsort($list);
}
?>

Putting what we have so far the inbox will always come first, at this point nothing is displayed we’re simple doing some prep work


$list = imap_list($mbox, '{mail.example.com:143/notls/norsh/novalidate-cert}', "*");
 
//remove  any } characters from the folder
if (preg_match("/}/i", $list[0])) {
	$arr = explode('}', $list[0]);
} 
 
//also remove the ] if it exists, normally Gmail have them
if (preg_match("/]/i", $list[0])) {
	$arr = explode(']/', $list[0]);
}
 
//remove INBOX. from the folder name	
$folder = str_replace('INBOX.', '', stripslashes($arr[1]));
 
//check if inbox is first folder if not reorder array
if($folder !== 'INBOX'){
	krsort($list);
}
?>

Next loop through the array and display each mailbox I’ve commented each step, also to show the mailbox names correctly decode them with imap_utf7_decode


//make sure the list is an array
if (is_array($list)) {
 
	 //loop through rach array index
     foreach ($list as $val) {
 
		//remove  any } charactors from the folder
		if (preg_match("/}/i", $val)) {
			$arr = explode('}', $val);
		} 
 
		//also remove the ] if it exists, normally Gmail have them
		if (preg_match("/]/i", $val)) {
			$arr = explode(']/', $val);
		}
 
		//remove any slashes
		$folder = trim(stripslashes($arr[1]));
 
		//remove inbox. from the folderName its not needed for displaying purposes
		$folderName = str_replace('INBOX.', '', $folder);
 
 
		echo "\"?folder=".imap_utf7_decode($folder)."\">".ucwords(strtolower(imap_utf7_decode($folderName)))."
\n";
 
    }
 
} else {
    echo "Folders not currently available\n";
}
?>

A lot of these steps are not essentially you could get all the mailbox folders and display them in a few lines as illustrated below but I believe taking the time to display the folders in a user friendly manor is much better.


$list = imap_list($mbox, "{imap.example.org}", "*");
if (is_array($list)) {
    foreach ($list as $val) {
        echo imap_utf7_decode($val) . "\n";
    }
} else {
    echo "imap_list failed: " . imap_last_error() . "\n";
}
?>

Is Twitter bad for your Blog?

Dave — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 04:14:19 +0000

This is a question I’ve been thinking about recently. I used to blog frequently heck almost daily when I was at university mostly about the projects I was working on.

Twitter has been around for quite a few years now its only the last 2 years that I’ve used it, the last year more then ever. I love Twitter I’m always reading up on the latest developments in the web industry its great but your blog could lose out on your attention, its easy to tweet a 140 character message not so much to write a meaningful post. I’ve noticed that I barely write any posts recently instead using Twitter far more!

Twitter is not to blame I am! it’s the convenience of Twitter that’s very addictive, ultimately its up to me to write new posts in conjunction with Twitter I believe they can co-exist if used correctly. On the other side of the coin Twitter can be very beneficial for a blog spreading a great post quickly in short space of time.

A good post can keep visitors reading for weeks but a tweet lasts a few hours at best till it’s buried with all the other thousands of tweets that are sent out daily.

Some things are more suited for Twitter then a post for example mentioning a good website and its link is great for Twitter short and to the point the same thing for a blog needs expanding for it to be really ‘worth while’ I think it comes down to the right tool for the right job.

What do you think?

Mixing Jeditable with a Calendar

Dave — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:35:41 +0000

For a recent project I needed to be able to edit text directly on the webpage I decided to use jeditable its very easy to implement and served my needs, but I also needed to add a Jquery UI calendar to the input once generated.

I tried a lot of different ways none of which worked until I came across a githup project called jeditable-datepicker

The default example works well:

$( document ).ready( function() {
 
  var date = $( '.editable' );
 
  date.editable(
    function( value, settings ) {
      date.html( value );
    },
    {
      type: 'datepicker'
    }
  );
 
} );

It how ever does not demonstrate how to save the changes, with a little change saving the changes is easily done.

$(function() {
 
	//editable
	var date = $('.editable');
 
	$('.editable').editable('save.php', {
         indicator : 'Saving...',
         tooltip   : 'Click to edit...',
         type: 'datepicker'
     });
 
});

The changes are sent to save.php via a post. Inside the save file you collect the data then ideally save it, for this example I’m only formatting the data and showing the result back.

 
$value = $_POST['value'];
$id    = $_POST['id'];
 
//format date
$value = date('jS M', strtotime($value));
 
//print the date 
echo $value;
?>

To see this in action have a look at this Demo

DroidEdit A text and code editor for android

Dave — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:21:44 +0000

This looks like an interesting IDE for Android development

DroidEdit is a text and code editor for android tablets and phones with the following features:

Syntax Highlighting for several languages (C, C++, C#, Java, HTML, CSS, Javascript, Python, Ruby, Groovy, JSP, Perl, LaTeX, SQL, XML, Lua,

I’ve been invited to be a technical reviewer for an upcoming book (PHP and CouchDB Web Development) from Packt publishing.

Dave — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 19:18:53 +0000

I’m thrilled to be asked to review the book, I’ve of course agreed to review the book which will be done over the next few months it’s expected to be released in March next year.

About the book

CouchDB is a NoSQL database which is making waves in the development world. It’s the tool of choice for many PHP developers so they need to understand the robust features of CouchDB and the tools that are available to them.

PHP and CouchDB Web Development Beginner’s Guide will teach you the basics and fundamentals of using CouchDB within a project. You will learn how to build an application from beginning to end, learning the difference between the “quick way” to do things, and the “right way” by looking through a variety of code examples and real world scenarios.

You will start with a walkthrough of setting up a sound development environment and then learn to create a variety of documents manually and programmatically. You will also learn how to manage their source control with Git and keep track of their progress. With each new concept, such as adding users and posts to your application, the author will take you through code step-by-step and explain how to use CouchDB’s robust features. Finally, you will learn how to easily deploy your application and how to use simple replication to scale your application.
What you will learn from this book :

Set up a web development environment from scratch
Dive into CouchDB and learn how it looks at databases, documents, design documents, and views
Conceptualize and create a simple PHP framework from scratch that will interact directly with CouchDB
Create the ability for users to sign up, log in, and reset their password through our application using CouchDB
Allow users to create posts and leverage design documents, views, and lists to do the heavy lifting
Learn how to add some of the bells and whistles commonly used by modern social networks
Add security and deploy your application to production
Learn how to use CouchDB to replicate your database

Approach

Each chapter follows the creation of a social networking application with step-by-step instructions. This means that you will have easily created a complete, working application by the end of the book.

Who this book is written for

This book is for beginner and intermediate PHP developers interested in using CouchDB development in their projects. Advanced PHP developers will appreciate the familiarity of the PHP architecture and can easily learn how to incorporate CouchDB into their existing development experiences.

Google Offers expands there deals to include other providers, should Groupon be worried?

Dave — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 19:50:23 +0000

Google offers (looks just like a rip of Groupon) is set to expand its offers from not only Google offers but to also include offers from other local providers, currently Google Offers is only available

Google Plus API released Read Only Access

Dave — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:03:20 +0000

Google has just released the first Google+ API, Its focus is on public data which lets you share read information that has been shared publicly on Google+

Google has also released a Google+ developers site This will be the place to go for their policies, terms, discussions with other developers, access to documentation.

tools that make development on the Google+ platform easier and more fun, and of course, the place where announcements concerning new releases will be made.

See the Google post for more details.

Reading events from an iCal Calendar using PHP

Dave — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 07:12:16 +0000

Reading event/calender information from iCal can be very useful this tutorial will show you how to read and use the information in a practical way. First lets create a function to collect the information we’re interested in from the iCal file.

Our function will be called iCalDecoder $file will be the location of the ical file

function iCalDecoder($file) {

Next using preg_match_all collect all information inside the iCal file between BEGIN:VEVENT and END:VEVENT then loop through all the results, separate each entry by its line break (rn). For each entry separate the label and the content by exploding on : then loop through the results and add them to an array called $majorarray.

Using preg_match we can catch any events between DESCRIPTION and END:VEVENT also then add them to the array which is then returned.

		preg_match_all('/(BEGIN:VEVENT.*?END:VEVENT)/si', $ical, $result, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
        for ($i = 0; $i &lt; count($result[0]); $i++) {             $tmpbyline = explode("rn", $result[0][$i]);                          foreach ($tmpbyline as $item) {                 $tmpholderarray = explode(":",$item);                 if (count($tmpholderarray) &gt;1) {
                    $majorarray[$tmpholderarray[0]] = $tmpholderarray[1];
                }
            }
 
            if (preg_match('/DESCRIPTION:(.*)END:VEVENT/si', $result[0][$i], $regs)) {
                $majorarray['DESCRIPTION'] = str_replace("  ", " ", str_replace("rn", "", $regs[1]));
            }
            $icalarray[] = $majorarray;
            unset($majorarray);             
 
        }
		return $icalarray;

To use the function we’ll add the results from the function to a variable called $events then loop through all array items using foreach

$events = iCalDecoder("location/of/iCal/file");
foreach($events as $event){

For a bit of cleanup we can remove the T and Z from the timestamp and add in date formatting:

	$date = $event['DTSTART'];//get date from ical
	$date = str_replace('T', '', $date);//remove T
	$date = str_replace('Z', '', $date);//remove Z
	$d    = date('d', strtotime($date));//get date day
	$m    = date('m', strtotime($date));//get date month
	$y    = date('Y', strtotime($date));//get date year
	$now = date('Y-m-d G:i:s');//current date and time
	$eventdate = date('Y-m-d G:i:s', strtotime($date));//user friendly date

Next show all events where the event date is more then the current date, so we don’t show past events, the present the event data and title, of course you can provide more information that is captured from iCal.

if($eventdate > $now){	
	echo "	
		\"eventHolder\">
			$eventdate
			\"eventTitle\">".$event['SUMMARY']."
		
";
}

Putting it all together:

function iCalDecoder($file) {
        $ical = file_get_contents($file);
        preg_match_all('/(BEGIN:VEVENT.*?END:VEVENT)/si', $ical, $result, PREG_PATTERN_ORDER);
        for ($i = 0; $i < count($result[0]); $i++) {
            $tmpbyline = explode("\r\n", $result[0][$i]);
 
            foreach ($tmpbyline as $item) {
                $tmpholderarray = explode(":",$item);
                if (count($tmpholderarray) >1) { 
                    $majorarray[$tmpholderarray[0]] = $tmpholderarray[1];
                }                
            }
 
            if (preg_match('/DESCRIPTION:(.*)END:VEVENT/si', $result[0][$i], $regs)) {
                $majorarray['DESCRIPTION'] = str_replace("  ", " ", str_replace("\r\n", "", $regs[1]));
            } 
            $icalarray[] = $majorarray;
            unset($majorarray);             
 
        }
        return $icalarray;
}
 
 
 
$events = iCalDecoder("location/of/iCal/file");
foreach($events as $event){
	$date = $event['DTSTART'];//get date from ical
	$date = str_replace('T', '', $date);//remove T 
	$date = str_replace('Z', '', $date);//remove Z	
	$d    = date('d', strtotime($date));//get date day
	$m    = date('m', strtotime($date));//get date month
	$y    = date('Y', strtotime($date));//get date year
	$now = date('Y-m-d G:i:s');//current date and time
	$eventdate = date('Y-m-d G:i:s', strtotime($date));//user friendly date	
 
	if($eventdate > $now){	
		echo "	
			\"eventHolder\">
				$eventdate
				\"eventTitle\">".$event['SUMMARY']."
			
";
	}
}

Convert mobile number to international format dynamically with php

Dave — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 10:03:53 +0000

I often need to covert mobile numbers into a UK international format of 44 followed by the number such as 442548951486 the numbers I work with can be in a mixed format some without a starting 0 others with 44 and same with spaces, so I wrote function that will convert a number in any mixture into a standard format quick and easily and as all the code is inside a function is reusable which means converting numbers in bulk is now very easy to do.

The function simple needs a number passing to it, a check is done to make sure the number only contains numbers then a check is done to see if the number starts with a 0 if not if will add a 0 as long as the start is not 4. Then a check is done to replace the 0 with a 44 then finally any spaces are removed and the formatted number is then returned.

Here’s the function:


function format_number($number)
{
	//make sure the number is actually a number
	if(is_numeric($number)){
 
		//if number doesn't start with a 0 or a 4 add a 0 to the start.
		if($number[0] != 0 && $number[0] != 4){
			$number = "0".$number;
		}
 
		//if number starts with a 0 replace with 4
		if($number[0] == 0){
			$number[0] = str_replace("0","4",$number[0]);			
			$number = "4".$number;	
		}
 
		//remove any spaces in the number
		$number = str_replace(" ","",$number);
 
		//return the number
		return $number;
 
	//number is not a number
	} else {
 
		//return nothing
		return false;
	}	
}
?>

Usage Example:


echo format_number('07295514973');
?>