Network Working Group                                         M. Crispin
Internet Draft: IMAP4 STATUS Extension          University of Washington
Document: internet-drafts/draft-ietf-imap-status-02.txt     January 1996


                         IMAP4 STATUS EXTENSION


Status of this Memo

   This document is an Internet-Draft.  Internet-Drafts are working
   documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas,
   and its working groups.  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the
   "1id-abstracts.txt" listing contained in the Internet-Drafts Shadow
   Directories on ds.internic.net (US East Coast), nic.nordu.net
   (Europe), ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast), or munnari.oz.au (Pacific
   Rim).

   This is a draft document of the IETF IMAP Working Group.  A revised
   version of this draft document will be submitted to the RFC editor as
   an Proposed Standard for the Internet Community.  Discussion and
   suggestions for improvement are requested, and should be sent to
   imap@CAC.Washington.EDU.  This document will expire before 30 June
   1996.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Introduction

   The Internet Message Access Protocol, Version 4 [IMAP4] contains the
   LIST and LSUB commands, for indentifying mailbox names on the server
   and retrieving some basic status informaton.  This document describes
   a mechanism to obtain additional mailbox name status information.












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IMAP4 STATUS Extension

   The STATUS extension is present in any IMAP4 implementation which
   returns "STATUS" as one of the supported capabilities to the
   CAPABILITY command.  Servers which have this extension offer the
   STATUS command and STATUS response, which enables the client to query
   the server about the status of a mailbox without selecting the
   mailbox.

   The STATUS command provides an alternative to opening a second IMAP4
   connection and doing an EXAMINE command on an mailbox to query that
   mailbox's status without deselecting the current mailbox in the first
   IMAP4 connection.

   Unlike the LIST command, the STATUS command is not guaranteed to be
   fast in its response.  In some implementations, the server may have
   to open the mailbox read-only internally to obtain certain status
   information.  Also unlike the LIST command, the STATUS command does
   not accept wildcards.


6.3.STATUS.     STATUS Command

   Arguments:  mailbox name
               status data item names

   Data:       untagged responses: STATUS

   Result:     OK - status completed
               NO - status failure: no status for that name
               BAD - command unknown or arguments invalid

      The STATUS command requests the status of the indicated mailbox.
      It does not change the currently selected mailbox, nor does it
      affect the state of any messages in the queried mailbox (in
      particular, STATUS must not cause messages to lose the \Recent
      flag).  The currently defined status data items that can be
      requested are:

      MESSAGES       The number of messages in the mailbox.

      RECENT         The number of messages with the \Recent flag set.

      UID-NEXT       The next UID that will is available for assignment
                     to the mailbox.

      UID-VALIDITY   The unique identifier validity value of the




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                     mailbox, as described in [IMAP4].

      UNSEEN         The number of messages which do not have the \Seen
                     flag set.


   Example:    C: A042 STATUS blurdybloop (UID-NEXT MESSAGES)
               S: * STATUS blurdybloop (MESSAGES 231 UID-NEXT 44292)
               S: A042 OK STATUS completed


7.2.STATUS.     STATUS Response

   Data:       name
               status parenthesized list

      The STATUS response occurs as a result of an STATUS command.  It
      returns the mailbox name that matches the STATUS specification and
      the requested mailbox status information.

   Example:    S: * STATUS blurdybloop (MESSAGES 231 UID-NEXT 44292)






























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.      Additional Formal Syntax

   The following syntax is as described in [IMAP4], with one extension:
   the token "+:=" means "added to the existing definition" as opposed
   to "::=" which means "definition".

   capability      +:= "STATUS"
                       ;; Must be returned by server to use STATUS command

   command_auth    +:= status

   mailbox_data    +:= "STATUS" SPACE mailbox SPACE "(" #<status_att number
")"

   status          ::= "STATUS" SPACE mailbox SPACE "(" 1#status_att ")"

   status_att      ::= "MESSAGES" / "RECENT" / "UID-NEXT" / "UID-VALIDITY" /
                       "UNSEEN"


































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References

   [IMAP4] Crispin, M. "Internet Message Access Protocol - Version 4",
   RFC 1730, University of Washington, December 1994.

Security Considerations

   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.

Author's Address:

   Mark R. Crispin
   Networks and Distributed Computing
   University of Washington
   4545 15th Avenue NE
   Seattle, WA  98105-4527

   Phone: +1 (206) 543-5762

   FAX: +1 (206) 685-4045

   EMail: MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU





























Crispin                                                         [Page 5]