NYCPHP Meetup

[David Krings]

Shadab Wadiwala wrote:
> Hello friends,
> 
> I m working on a minor project using  PHP/MySQL in my college.
> I have been assigned a tough task to do.
> The project is a web-based email service on the lines of Yahoo Mail and 
> Gmail.
> 
> Actually I need to create an online POP3 account and an SMTP account of 
> an end-user  in the email server using PHP.
> I don't have any experience in online POP3 and SMTP accounts  creation 
> and not aware with the PHP codes to perform the specific task.
> 
> So if u know any thing regarding the above mentioned task so pls help me.
> 
> Thank you
> 

Did you at least google for "PHP POP3 SMTP"? That gives as the top 
result this page:
http://www.weberdev.com/get_example-501.html
You then need some mail server, there is usually one or more in every 
Linux distro or you can use Mercury Mail on Windows or ask the IT 
department at your school if they can provide you with a dummy server 
that can only send email to itself or so.
You may want to find the most popular mail server applications and read 
through their documentation. That will give you a good start to learn 
how to talk to a mail server. You can also read up on the POP3 and SMTP 
standards, I am pretty sure they are documented in detail to the nth degree.

Sure, you can copy the example and hope that it works, but be sure that 
your prof will do the same (profs tend to be quite smart). Also, this 
mailing list gets archived on the web and is searchable, so be careful 
what you ask for. If you copy, at least reference the source or better 
come up with a good story. Otherwise be prepared to get exmatriculated 
for plagiarism.
That aside, I think you should talk to your prof and discuss this with 
him/her. I don't consider this a "minor project" and wonder what a major 
project would be. Maybe you both can agree on something that is still 
challanging to you, but isn't impossible given your current knowledge 
and the time available. You asking this now makes me suspect that this 
is a summer session course, so you won't have much time.

Good luck!

David