How to continuously gather statistics?

Hello,

I recently upgraded to the latest version of Dovecot, and want to use the newly introduced logging / event system. I want to fetch the statistics every couple of seconds, and push those to our logging platform. Metrics such as: number of IMAP commands, average time they took, etc.

However the metrics as reported by Dovecot continously increment. So I see two solutions:

• Our solution could keep track of the previous values. But that could also break if the statistics are reset for some reason (e.g. threshold reached).
• My second thought was to use "stats -r". That *should* clear the statistics directly after fetching them. And thus, give a better picture. However I am not sure if this gives me actual useful results.

Or is there maybe a better approach to fetch statistics that I overlooked?

Thanks a lot.

Best, Roel van Duijnhoven