http API for IMAP

[Chris Kiakas]

You just described a more complex environment not a simplified environment. You can run code within code within code. Already we have all this abstraction and it’s leading to people not understanding and implementing solutions that make very little sense. Like what you describe. Why would you want to run an IMAP server in a browser? It’s so wrong I don’t even know where to start.

If you are not talking about an IMAP server and you are talking about an IMAP client you are in the wrong forum.


> On Nov 14, 2019, at 8:21 AM, Phillip Odam via dovecot <dovecot at dovecot.org> wrote:
> 
> A HTTP API for IMAP and for that matter, POP3 and SMTP is exactly what we built where I work.
> 
> For anyone wonder why build such a thing? A simplified interface is an exceptionally powerful tool. Many of our clients have encountered issues constructing multipart http requests so if that’s an issue, good luck getting IMAP to work. Since multipart turns out to be such an issue we’ve turned out support for a variety of uploads including (completely non-standard) where the request body is just the file content.
> 
> We’ve built our API in Java and as such have simply used the JavaMail API. Admittedly though the plan is to get off this design since when there’s 10s of thousands messages in an IMAP maildir folder the index can grow to an unmanageable size.
> 
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2019 at 2:59 AM Thomas Güttler via dovecot <dovecot at dovecot.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Am 13.11.19 um 17:21 schrieb Ralph Seichter via dovecot:
> > * Thomas Güttler via dovecot:
> > 
> >> Is there a way to access mails in dovecot via https?
> > 
> > Why on earth would that be beneficial?
> > 
> >    "The Internet Message Access Protocol, Version 4rev1 (IMAP4rev1)
> >     allows a client to access and manipulate electronic mail messages
> >     on a server." (RFC 3501)
> > 
> > Putting it bluntly: Learn to use the protocol specifically designed for
> > the task at hand, not a protocol with different design goals that you
> > happen to know better.
> 
> Stateless, http and URLs are the future. JavaScript running on in browser or
> mobile phone can't connect to IMAP/SMTP.
> 
> AFAIK you can't sent a link/URL to a mail on a shared folder to a friend.
> Like "Hi  bob, she loves me. See this message from here https:/...../"
> 
> Regards,
>    Thomas Güttler
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Thomas Guettler http://www.thomas-guettler.de/
> I am looking for feedback: https://github.com/guettli/programming-guidelines