Get email attachment cron job in php

Question

Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to use php to grab the attachment from an email? I am already using php to successfully process a rather large .csv file and exucute different actions based on conditions. It is working very well, but I have now been asked to automate the action of downloading the email that contains the new .csv file several times a day.

Using this as the start of my code, I am do what I please with the information in the .csv file once I download it, and place it on my server. So can I just open the attachment from the email, and skip the step of downloading it, and placing it on my server?

   $handle = fopen("updateaccounting.csv", "r");
        // loop content of csv file, using comma as delemiter
        while (($data = fgetcsv($handle, 1000, ",")) !== false) {
        $compareid = $data[0];
        $date = $data[1];
        $first = $data[5];
        $last = $data[6];
        $city = $data[7];
        $fundedamount = $data[10];
        $xmlstatus = $data[13];
        $custtestid = substr($compareid, 0, 11);

My question is how to grab the .csv file using php running on a cronjob. This way I can use my existing code that processes the file along with what I am looking for, how to automate the process of getting the file.. Any help would be GREAT! Thank you so much. Jason

Answer 1

For this solution, you will need to access the mailbox using IMAP. Chances are, this is already supported.

Next, you can grab the file attachment into a $data variable (without needing to save it). See this bountied answer: Retrieving file attachment. Then, you should be able to create your csv using your code (which of course you've put into a function now, right? :)) If you have questions on accessing mail via IMAP, search StackOverflow, try it out using examples from PHP Manual and then post any new questions.