Net::IMAP implements Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) client functionality. The protocol is described in [IMAP].
IMAP Overview An IMAP client connects to a server, and then authenticates itself using either authenticate() or login(). Having authenticated itself, there is a range of commands available to it. Most work with mailboxes, which may be arranged in an hierarchical namespace, and each of which contains zero or more messages. How this is implemented on the server is implementation-dependent; on a UNIX server, it will frequently be implemented as files in mailbox format within a hierarchy of directories.
To work on the messages within a mailbox, the client must first select that mailbox, using either select() or (for read-only access) examine(). Once the client has successfully selected a mailbox, they enter selected state, and that mailbox becomes the current mailbox, on which mail-item related commands implicitly operate.
Messages have two sorts of identifiers: message sequence numbers and UIDs.
Message sequence numbers number messages within a mailbox from 1 up to the number of items in the mailbox. If a new message arrives during a session, it receives a sequence number equal to the new size of the mailbox. If messages are expunged from the mailbox, remaining messages have their sequence numbers “shuffled down” to fill the gaps.
UIDs, on the other hand, are permanently guaranteed not to identify another message within the same mailbox, even if the existing message is deleted. UIDs are required to be assigned in ascending (but not necessarily sequential) order within a mailbox; this means that if a non-IMAP client rearranges the order of mailitems within a mailbox, the UIDs have to be reassigned. An IMAP client thus cannot rearrange message orders.
imap = Net::IMAP.new('mail.example.com') imap.authenticate('LOGIN', 'joe_user', 'joes_password') imap.examine('INBOX') imap.search(["RECENT"]).each do |message_id| envelope = imap.fetch(message_id, "ENVELOPE")[0].attr["ENVELOPE"] puts "#{envelope.from[0].name}: \t#{envelope.subject}" end
imap = Net::IMAP.new('mail.example.com') imap.authenticate('LOGIN', 'joe_user', 'joes_password') imap.select('Mail/sent-mail') if not imap.list('Mail/', 'sent-apr03') imap.create('Mail/sent-apr03') end imap.search(["BEFORE", "30-Apr-2003", "SINCE", "1-Apr-2003"]).each do |message_id| imap.copy(message_id, "Mail/sent-apr03") imap.store(message_id, "+FLAGS", [:Deleted]) end imap.expunge
Thread Safety Net::IMAP supports concurrent threads. For example,
imap = Net::IMAP.new("imap.foo.net", "imap2") imap.authenticate("cram-md5", "bar", "password") imap.select("inbox") fetch_thread = Thread.start { imap.fetch(1..-1, "UID") } search_result = imap.search(["BODY", "hello"]) fetch_result = fetch_thread.value imap.disconnect
This script invokes the FETCH command and the SEARCH command concurrently.
An IMAP server can send three different types of responses to indicate failure:
the attempted command could not be successfully completed. For instance, the username/password used for logging in are incorrect; the selected mailbox does not exist; etc.
the request from the client does not follow the server’s understanding of the IMAP protocol. This includes attempting commands from the wrong client state; for instance, attempting to perform a SEARCH command without having SELECTed a current mailbox. It can also signal an internal server failure (such as a disk crash) has occurred.
the server is saying goodbye. This can be part of a normal logout sequence, and can be used as part of a login sequence to indicate that the server is (for some reason) unwilling to accept your connection. As a response to any other command, it indicates either that the server is shutting down, or that the server is timing out the client connection due to inactivity.
These three error response are represented by the errors Net::IMAP::NoResponseError, Net::IMAP::BadResponseError, and Net::IMAP::ByeResponseError, all of which are subclasses of Net::IMAP::ResponseError. Essentially, all methods that involve sending a request to the server can generate one of these errors. Only the most pertinent instances have been documented below.
Because the IMAP class uses Sockets for communication, its methods are also susceptible to the various errors that can occur when working with sockets. These are generally represented as Errno errors. For instance, any method that involves sending a request to the server and/or receiving a response from it could raise an Errno::EPIPE error if the network connection unexpectedly goes down. See the socket(7), ip(7), tcp(7), socket(2), connect(2), and associated man pages.
Finally, a Net::IMAP::DataFormatError is thrown if low-level data is found to be in an incorrect format (for instance, when converting between UTF-8 and UTF-16), and Net::IMAP::ResponseParseError is thrown if a server response is non-parseable.
Crispin, “INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - VERSION 4rev1”,
RFC 2060, December 1996. (Note: since obsoleted by RFC 3501)
Alvestrand, H., “Tags for the Identification of Languages”, RFC 1766, March 1995.
Myers, J., and M. Rose, “The Content-MD5 Header Field”, RFC 1864, October 1995.
Freed, N., and N. Borenstein, “MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies”, RFC 2045, November 1996.
Crocker, D., “Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet Text Messages”, STD 11, RFC 822, University of Delaware, August 1982.
Myers, J., “IMAP4 QUOTA extension”, RFC 2087, January 1997.
Myers, J., “IMAP4 ACL extension”, RFC 2086, January 1997.
Klensin, J., Catoe, R., and Krumviede, P., “IMAP/POP AUTHorize Extension for Simple Challenge/Response”, RFC 2195, September 1997.
Crispin, M., “INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL - SORT and THREAD Extensions”, draft-ietf-imapext-sort, May 2003.
Goldsmith, D. and Davis, M., “UTF-7: A Mail-Safe Transformation Format of Unicode”, RFC 2152, May 1997.
POP3 authentication error.
This class represents a message which exists on the POP server. Instances of this class are created by the POP3 class; they should not be directly created by the user.
Represents an SMTP authentication error.
Represents a fatal SMTP error (error code 5xx, except for 500)
Command is not supported on server.
An abstract class for enumerating pseudo-prime numbers.
Concrete subclasses should override succ, next, rewind.
An implementation of PseudoPrimeGenerator which uses a prime table generated by trial division.
Generates all integers which are greater than 2 and are not divisible by either 2 or 3.
This is a pseudo-prime generator, suitable on checking primality of an integer by brute force method.
Internal use. An implementation of Eratosthenes’ sieve
A set of rule and position in it’s RHS. Note that the number of pointers is more than rule’s RHS array, because pointer points right edge of the final symbol when reducing.
A table of LALR states.
A LALR state.