to display latest 5 (more or less) messages

Take a look at code how blocks are created and how we create the inbox list. combine the two methods for your purpoess.

I've spent a good 8 hours trying to figure this out. I'm new to this.
Can someone please, please hint us?

How do you display the subject of the five latest messages in a block?

Thank you!

Have a look at privatemsg_list in privatemsg.module file. To get the data you need to do:

  $query = _privatemsg_assemble_query('list', $account, 'list');
  $result = pager_query($query['query'], 5, 0, $query['count']);

where $account is the user account for the person for who you want to list the messages. Replace the number 5 with however many threads you want to show.

After that, if you want the same layout as in the normal listings, copt the form creation code from after the query in the same function.

For a block, I assume you just want a list of titles and no paging, you can do that with the following code

$query = _privatemsg_assemble_query('list', $account, 'list');
 $result = db_query_range($query['query'], 0, 5);
$list = array();
while ($thread = db_fetch_array($result)) {
  $list[] = l($thread['subject'], 'messages/view/'. $thread['thread_id']);
}
return theme('item_list', $list);

If you just want to display the content of the inbox, replace 'list' with 'inbox'.

So I click on "Add Block" from the admin menu, I put in the code, change the input code to PHP and save it.
Do I add "echo $result;"?

The block is either empty or showing "Resource id #140".

The code was supposed to be used in a module. With a few small changes, it should work with the php code input format too..

- Add a global $user before the first line and replace $account with $user
- Replace "return theme... " with "echo theme..."

That solves the problem!
You guys are wonderful!

read comment 7:

- Add a global $user before the first line

global $user;

i tried a lot, but just cant figure out how to recreate the messages page where you see the titles, participants and the dates... its giving me a headache :P

I use the above code

global $user;

$query = _privatemsg_assemble_query('list', $user, 'list');
$result = db_query_range($query['query'], 0, 25);

$list = array();

  while ($thread = db_fetch_array($result)) {
    $list[] = l($thread['subject'], 'messages/view/'. $thread['thread_id']);
  }

echo theme('item_list', $list);

print_r($list);

coulde someone maybe help me out with this?

@lasac - if you want all the fields in the normal display, why not simple call privatemsg list in the first place?

global $user;
echo drupal_get_form('privatemsg_list', 'list', $user->uid);

@ people developing custom functionality - you WILL need to understand atleast a little php and also read the code of the module to see what it does.

@nbz: you naild it that is exactly what i need, and for the global comment i do know a bit of php but not much. I tried looking in the module but could not find the info i needed, may i ask how you got that snippet?