On 4 Dec 2002 at 8:15, Andreas Aardal Hanssen wrote:
> >> If someone does a STATUS on a mailbox that the IMAP server has not seen
> >> before - what is expected output for UIDNEXT and UIDVALIDITY?
> >I don't understand this question.
>
> Since UIDVALIDITY is an IMAP-feature, and an "unseen" mailbox, that is
> - a mailbox that you have never selected before and never done any
> operation on before with IMAP - has no UIDVALIDITY, what is the
> expected behavior of the IMAP server when the client issues a STATUS
> <mailbox> (UIDNEXT UIDVALIDITY) ?
I think you might be confusing IMAP, which is a general-purpose,
abstracted protocol for accessing a message store, with the specific
implementational details of the particular message store for which it is
acting.
>From the IMAP perspective, there's really no such thing as "a mailbox
the server has never seen before": in the case where a server is
offering the contents of a mailbox (assuming that you mean "mailbox" in
the IMAP sense of "a folder") for the first time, then it should simply
create a UIDVALIDITY value appropriate for its internal purposes - the
client can make no assumptions about what the value itself actually
means. Clearly, if the server has never accessed the mailbox before,
then nor has the client, so the client has no basis for expecting anything
in this situation.
If the message store your server is presenting does not inherently
record message ordering, or if it uses a unique ID scheme other than a
32-bit incrementing value, then it is up to your server to create and
preserve some kind of record that handles the translation between that
scheme and the scheme required by IMAP. The exact details of how
you go about this are up to you, but you have to do it - it's not in any
sense optional.
> Sorry again - I refer to the process of assigning UIDVALIDITY value to a
> mailbox and UID values to messages.
Without wanting to stress the obvious here, Mark is absolutely right - the
client can infer nothing from the value of UIDVALIDITY except that it is
the same as or different from the last value the server expressed.
Cheers!
-- David --
------------------ David Harris -+- Pegasus Mail ----------------------
Box 5451, Dunedin, New Zealand | e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: +64 3 453-6880 | Fax: +64 3 453-6612
Thought for the day:
Cleavage (n): something you can approve of and
look down on at the same time. -- W. Garnett.
