The IMAP METADATA Extension
RFC 5464
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(February 2009; Errata)
Was draft-daboo-imap-annotatemore (individual in app area)
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Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
Reviews | |||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 5464 (Proposed Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Chris Newman | ||
Send notices to | eburger@bea.com, alexey.melnikov@isode.com |
Network Working Group C. Daboo Request for Comments: 5464 Apple, Inc. Category: Standards Track February 2009 The IMAP METADATA Extension Status of This Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract The METADATA extension to the Internet Message Access Protocol permits clients and servers to maintain "annotations" or "metadata" on IMAP servers. It is possible to have annotations on a per-mailbox basis or on the server as a whole. For example, this would allow comments about the purpose of a particular mailbox to be "attached" to that mailbox, or a "message of the day" containing server status information to be made available to anyone logging in to the server. Daboo Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 5464 The IMAP METADATA Extension February 2009 Table of Contents 1. Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Conventions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3. Data Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.1. Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2. Namespace of Entries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2.1. Entry Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3.3. Private versus Shared and Access Control . . . . . . . . . 6 4. IMAP Protocol Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.1. General Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 4.2. GETMETADATA Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 4.2.1. MAXSIZE GETMETADATA Command Option . . . . . . . . . . 9 4.2.2. DEPTH GETMETADATA Command Option . . . . . . . . . . . 10 4.3. SETMETADATA Command . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 4.4. METADATA Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4.4.1. METADATA Response with Values . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 4.4.2. Unsolicited METADATA Response without Values . . . . . 13 5. Formal Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 6.1. Entry and Attribute Registration Template . . . . . . . . 16 6.2. Server Entry Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 6.2.1. /shared/comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 6.2.2. /shared/admin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 6.3. Mailbox Entry Registrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 6.3.1. /shared/comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 6.3.2. /private/comment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 7. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 8. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Appendix A. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Daboo Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 5464 The IMAP METADATA Extension February 2009 1. Introduction and Overview The goal of the METADATA extension is to provide a means for clients to set and retrieve "annotations" or "metadata" on an IMAP server. The annotations can be associated with specific mailboxes or the server as a whole. The server can choose to support only server annotations or both server and mailbox annotations. A server that supports both server and mailbox annotations indicates the presence of this extension by returning "METADATA" as one of the supported capabilities in the CAPABILITY command response. A server that supports only server annotations indicates the presence of this extension by returning "METADATA-SERVER" as one of the supported capabilities in the CAPABILITY command response. A server that supports unsolicited annotation change responses MUST support the "ENABLE" [RFC5161] extension to allow clients to turn that feature on. The METADATA extension adds two new commands and one new untagged response to the IMAP base protocol. This extension makes the following changes to the IMAP protocol: o adds a new SETMETADATA command o adds a new GETMETADATA command o adds a new METADATA untagged response o adds a new METADATA response code The rest of this document describes the data model and protocol changes more rigorously. 2. Conventions Used in This Document In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client andShow full document text