I know there are some PHP libraries out there that can pull contact lists from major email services like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook. But what I really need is something that can actually fetch the emails themselves, not just the contacts.
Does anyone know if there are existing PHP APIs or libraries that can do this? I want to retrieve actual email messages from these services programmatically.
I could probably build something from scratch using IMAP or their official APIs, but I would rather use an existing solution if one is available. No point in rebuilding something that already works well, especially since I am still learning PHP.
phpmailer has imap functionality, but honestly, just use php’s native imap extension. it’s built-in and works great with all the major providers. setup’s pretty straightforward once you get the server settings right.
I’ve been doing email integration for years - skip the native IMAP extension and go with dedicated libraries like Webklex/php-imap or Fetch. You’ll save yourself tons of debugging headaches, especially with OAuth2 for Gmail and Outlook. Native IMAP works but you’ll waste time fighting connection issues and server quirks. Webklex is my go-to since it handles the complexity but still gives you full access to messages, attachments, and metadata. Just make sure whatever you pick supports newer auth methods - basic auth is getting killed off everywhere.
Check out the Laminas Mail component for pulling emails programmatically. It’s got a solid abstraction layer over IMAP and handles tons of edge cases you’d hit with raw implementations. Used it last year on a project where we pulled messages from multiple Gmail accounts - worked like a charm. Way better than rolling your own IMAP wrapper, especially for character encoding and folder navigation. Works well with modern auth flows too. Just remember you’ll need to enable IMAP access on the email accounts first, which might need extra security settings depending on your provider. Documentation’s decent and there’s plenty of examples online to get you started fast. Definitely worth considering with the other suggestions here.