The IMAP METADATA Extension
RFC 5464
| Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(February 2009; Errata)
Was draft-daboo-imap-annotatemore (individual in app area)
|
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Cyrus Daboo | ||
| Last updated | 2020-01-21 | ||
| Stream | IETF | ||
| Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized with errata 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 and
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