How to get raw email data with the imap extension?

Question

I\'m looking for a way to download the whole raw email data (including attachment), similar to what you get by clicking \"Show Original\" in Gmail.

Currently, I can get

Answer 1

My answer is "overcomplete", see Boy Baukema's answer for a more straight forward "view source" way of doing if you don't need the whole structure of the email.

If you want to fetch all, you need to fetch

• The headers imap_fetchheader.
• Obtain the number of bodies the message has imap_fetchstructure.
• Each mine-headers a body has imap_fetchmime.
• Each body it has imap_fetchbody.

As mime-message can have multiple bodies, you need to process each part after the other. To reduce load to the server use the FT_PREFETCHTEXT option for imap_fetchheader. Some example code about imap_fetchstructure in another answer that shows handling the imap connection and iterating over parts of a message already through encapsulation.