imap_sort

(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

imap_sort — Gets and sort messages

Description

imap_sort(
    IMAP\Connection $imap,
    int $criteria,
    bool $reverse,
    int $flags = 0,
    ?string $search_criteria = null,
    ?string $charset = null
): array|false

Gets and sorts message numbers by the given parameters.

Parameters

imap

An IMAP\Connection instance.

criteria

Criteria can be one (and only one) of the following:

SORTDATE - message Date
SORTARRIVAL - arrival date
SORTFROM - mailbox in first From address
SORTSUBJECT - message subject
SORTTO - mailbox in first To address
SORTCC - mailbox in first cc address
SORTSIZE - size of message in octets

reverse

Whether to sort in reverse order.

flags

The flags are a bitmask of one or more of the following:

SE_UID - Return UIDs instead of sequence numbers
SE_NOPREFETCH - Don't prefetch searched messages

search_criteria

IMAP2-format search criteria string. For details see imap_search().

charset

MIME character set to use when sorting strings.

Return Values

Returns an array of message numbers sorted by the given parameters, or false on failure.

Changelog

Version	Description
8.1.0	The `imap` parameter expects an IMAP\Connection instance now; previously, a valid `imap` resource was expected.
8.0.0	`reverse` is now bool instead of int.
8.0.0	`search_criteria` and `charset` are now nullable.

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User Contributed Notes 1 note

down

antoine dot spam-nono at maxg dot info ¶

18 years ago

I worked a lot with IMAP functions since I wrote a complete webmail and I've got a little tip about the imap_sort function :

There is a big difference between :

<?php
 imap_sort($imap, SORTDATE, 1);
// and 
 imap_sort($imap, SORTARRIVAL, 1);
?>

The first command will issue a
 >> FETCH 1:last (UID ENVELOPE BODY.PEEK[HEADER.FIELDS (Newsgroups Content-MD5 Content-Disposition Content-Language Content-Location Followup-To References)] INTERNALDATE RFC822.SIZE FLAGS)

While the second resulted in
 >> FETCH 1:last (UID INTERNALDATE RFC822.SIZE FLAGS)

As a result, using SORTDATE took 3 seconds longer to complete on a 800-emails mailbox, while the results are quite the same (except if you have to deal with forged dates or timezones, but the arrival order is far more logical)

My advice if you sort your emails by arrival is to actually use SORTARRIVAL, or better don't use imap_sort and go straight with message numbers (not UIDs). On large mailboxes, if you display messages per page, you will have significant performance increases (by avoiding 5 seconds of sorting).

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