I would like to learn how to build a web-based email client in PHP (similar to yahoo and gmail).
Does anyone know how I can get started with this?
I would like my system to be able to send and receive email.
Most obvious answer would be "don't": there are already lots of webmail software, some of which are PHP-based (if you depend on using PHP, because you already have a server based on a LAMP stack, for instance).
To quote only a few names, all PHP-based, you could have a look at these ones:
I've used the three firsts of the list for quite some time ; roundcube was definitely the most "user-friendly", I'd say...
(Googling a bit, you might find many more -- but I think I spoke about the ones that are the most used)
Now, if you have to set up a Webmail, say, for you company: definitely use some already existing software:
As a sidenote: if your company wants you to build a clone of gmail, you won't (same thing: how many people worked on gmail? How many programmers does your company have? How much can your company spend on this? )...
And for just a couple dollars each year, your company could have a "professionnal" Google account for each one of it's employes, BTW...
After all this, if you still want to / have to write a custom hand-made webmail using a LA*(M)*P stack, you will need to know at least the following:
Considering all this is not a problem (If you are not quite good at all this already, and/or don't have much experience, it could take at least a couple of years to acquire that... Considering programming and web-developping is your full-time activity), you can start tkinking about accessing a mail server using, for instance, IMAP.
There are several possibilities here.
I would have a look, at least, before choosing, at these two:
Zend_Mail
; maybe it can be used outside of the Zend Framework, BTWOnce your application is quite done, you will (hopefully !) start getting users, which means at least three things:
Here, again, are you ready to deal with that?
Well, I think I said enough ; now, it's your time to think: do you really want/need to develop such an application from scratch?
If you have a bit of free time, maybe you could participate in an already existing, open-source, project ? That could be profitable to every one ;-)
If you pass point 5, you'll know how to build one.
You can build a simple one quite easily using the PHP IMAP functions but if you have to ask then it might be a bit complicated for you.
Have you considered using a pre-built one:
Thats a HUGE question!
Your main options are
1. Directly integrating your code with an existing mail server
2. Using IMAP and SMTP to talk to an existing mail server
Number 2 is the most straightforward because you can change mail servers if you ever need to.
and yes there's a lot more to consider as you go
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