Specifications

you could allow them to use many addresses. You would need to change a limited
amount of other code too. The send mail form would need a drop-down box to select
from which address to use.
• Add the ability to send, receive, and view mail with attachments. If users are to be able
to send attachments, you will need to build in file upload capabilities as discussed in
Chapter 16, “Interacting with the File System and the Server.” Sending mail with attach-
ments is covered in Chapter 28, “Building a Mailing List Manager.”
• Add address book capabilities.
• Add network news reading abilities. Reading from an NNTP server using the IMAP
functions is almost identical to reading from a mailbox. You just need to specify a differ-
ent port number and protocol in the
imap_open() call. Instead of naming a mailbox like
INBOX, you name a newsgroup to read from instead. You could combine this with the
thread-building capabilities from the project in Chapter 29, “Building Web Forums,” to
build a threaded Web-based newsreader.
Next
In the next chapter, we’ll build another email-related project—an application to support sending
newsletters on multiple topics to people who subscribe through our site.
Building a Web-Based Email Service
C
HAPTER 27
27
BUILDING A
WEB-BASED
EMAIL
SERVICE
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