In some cases you might need to redirect a given mailbox to a PHP script to handle the incoming messages. This can be easily done with cPanel -> Forwarders tool.
To set up pipe forwarding, you can follow the steps below:
- Log in to your cPanel;
- Click on the Forwarders icon, under the Mail section;
- Click on the Add Forwarder button;
- Fill in Address to Forward and put the mail address you would like to pipe the messages from.
- Click on the Advanced options link and select Pipe to a Program. Then fill in the full path to the script which will handle the messages. Bear in mind that the path is relative to your home directory, so if you create a script/file called pipescript.php placed inside your home/ folder you should fill in only pipescript.php inside the Pipe to a Program field. If the script is situated inside the public_html/ folder you should fill in public_html/pipescript.php
There are several important things you should check regarding the PHP script which is handling the email messages:
- Ensure the very first line of the script is a hashbang (also called shebang). This is a special line which identifies the file as a PHP script. In most cases it should look like this:
#!/usr/bin/php -q
- Make sure that there are no whitespaces or blank lines before the above line as this will be sent to the mail server, which will result in a bounced message. The –q option instructs PHP not to print its version either, since this will also result in a bounced message.
- Make sure that the script permissions are set correctly. In most cases, you would simply need tochange the permissions, either via your cPanel -> File Manager or through an FTP client and set them to 755. This will make the script executable.
Below you can find a sample PHP script which handles piped messages. The script will read the input from the STDIN and then save the full message into a file called pipemail.txt (make sure you provide the full path to the pipemail.txt file).
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#!/usr/bin/php -q
<?
/* Read the message from STDIN */
$fd=fopen("php://stdin","r");
$email="";// This will be the variable holding the data.
while(!feof($fd)){
$email.=fread($fd,1024);
}
fclose($fd);
/* Saves the data into a file */
$fdw=fopen("/home/user/pipemail.txt","w+");
fwrite($fdw,$email);
fclose($fdw);
/* Script End */
?>
where the user from the /home/user/pipemail.txt line is your cPanel username. |
