Mail archiving/restoring??

My requirements are as follows:

In our company "openwebmail" is the software used as mail client for the intranet website and the mail server is sendmail redhat linux 7.2.

The backup server is running redhat linux 7.2

"openwebmail" is written is perl.
It is accessible from the Internet explorer.

I have to develop an archiving facility for the mails. The mails should be archived automatically on per user basis when the quota granted to the user exceeds and should also be archived explicitly by user if he wants.

I have to archive the mails on the backup server mentioned above.

How should I begin? What should be the programming language and which platform should I use?

Is it possible with PHP?
Is there a need for a database backend?

Please help me out,
akaash...

Yes, this can be done. Theres a project going on over at sourceforge for just this sort of thing. Uses a PHP frontend, and also a SQL backend. You can find details on it at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/php-mail-arc/

Thread moved from 'PHP Coding' to 'Programming Theory' by nawlej.

Reason: User will get better response here. Question being asked is not a problem with a script.

Thanks Nawlej,

for suggesting the site and the proj. similar to mine. i haven't referred it but i have downloaded it.

Anyway to automatically export mail them to an .eml file?

what is this .eml extension all about??

plz help...

You can export mail (save it) in a .eml file.
I see it alot at the bottom of receipts for on-line orders. As if the site has sent a copy of the reciept to themselves and saved it.

So does anyone know how to do that?

Thanks nicky,

but i don't know how to do that...

check out php's POP3/IMAP mail functions. .eml is just a text-based file format for storing emails, you can create one on-the-fly pretty easily. Just open one using a text editor, you'll see what I mean.