Question

Good evening everybody!

I’m stuck at writing my own email program in php for fun. I try to download all attachments from my email-address but some files have names like

ISO-8859-15”%46%6C%79%65%72%20%53%61%69%73%6F%6E%65%72%F6%66

To decode the headers is used this function:

private function imap_header_decode($text) {
    $ret = "";
    $elements = imap_mime_header_decode($text);
    for($i = 0; $i < count($elements); $i++) {
        $ret .= utf8_decode($elements[$i]->text);
    }
    return $ret;
}

The headers are getting correctly decrypted while the file names don’t. What could be the problem or better, how can I solve it?

EDIT: I used the imap_ functions from php for doing all the mail things (using pop3 with ssl)

Answer 1

This type of encoding is called url encoding and it is defined in RFC 3986 (“URI syntax”). You can decode it with urldecode.