PHP imap_search not detecting all messages in gmail inbox

Question

When I run a very simple imap_search on my GMail inbox, the search returns less messages than it should.

Here is the script that anyone with a GMail account can run.

$host = '{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}';
$user = 'foo';
$pass = 'bar';

$imapStream = imap_open($host,$user,$pass) or die(imap_last_error());

$messages = imap_search($imapStream,"ALL");

echo count($messages);

imap_close($imapStream);

This returns 39 messages. But, I've got 100 messages in my inbox, some bundled in conversations, some forwarded from another account (SquirrelMail).

Can anyone duplicate these results, and/or tell me what's going on?

---

Other server strings I've tried, all returning the same results:

{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}
{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl/novalidate-cert}INBOX
{imap.gmail.com:993/imap/ssl}INBOX

GMail's IMAP feature support: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78761

Answer 1

After significant hair loss, I've found the answer. It was a misleading UI.

GMail groups one's messages into "Conversations" by default. These conversations can include archived messages.

So, for example, Bob's inbox looks like there's 4 conversations of 25 messages, which should apparently return 100 inbox messages. In reality, 60 of the messages are in the archive (not the inbox), so the imap_search() returns 40. These messages are magically pulled out of the archive and placed into inbox conversations.

In the Settings->General menu, you can toggle conversation view, which will put all of those naughty archived messages back where they belong, and show your true inbox view.