Network Working Group M. Crispin INTERNET DRAFT: IMAP UIDPLUS extension May 2005 Obsoletes: 2359 Document: internet-drafts/draft-crispin-imap-rfc2359bis-04.txt Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) - UIDPLUS extension Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. 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." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html A revised version of this document will be submitted to the RFC editor as an Informational Document for the Internet Community. A revised version of this draft document will be submitted to the RFC editor as a Proposed Standard for the Internet Community. Discussion and suggestions for improvement are requested, and should be sent to imapext@IMC.ORG. This document will expire before 25 November 2005. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Abstract The UIDPLUS extension of the Internet Message Access Protocol [IMAP] provides a set of features intended to reduce the amount of time and resources used by some client operations. The features in UIDPLUS are primarily intended for disconnected-use clients. Conventions Used in this Document In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and server respectively. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in [KEYWORDS]. A "UID set" is similar to the [IMAP] sequence set; however, the "*" value for sequence number is not permitted. Introduction and Overview The UIDPLUS extension is present in any IMAP server implementation which returns "UIDPLUS" as one of the supported capabilities to the CAPABILITY command. The UIDPLUS extension defines an additional command. In addition, this document recommends new status response codes in IMAP which SHOULD be returned by all server implementations, regardless of whether or not the UIDPLUS extension is implemented. The added facilities of the features in UIDPLUS are optimizations; clients can provide equivalent functionality, albeit less efficiently, by using facilities in the base protocol. 1. Additional Commands The following command definition is an extension to [IMAP] section 6.4. 1.1 UID EXPUNGE Command Arguments: sequence set Data: untagged responses: EXPUNGE Result: OK - expunge completed NO - expunge failure (e.g., permission denied) BAD - command unknown or arguments invalid The UID EXPUNGE command permanently removes from the currently selected mailbox all messages that both have the \Deleted flag set and have a UID that is included in the specified sequence set. If a message either does not have the \Deleted flag set or has a UID that is not included in the specified sequence set, it is not affected. This command may be used to ensure that a replayed EXPUNGE command does not remove any messages that have been marked as \Deleted between the time that the user requested the expunge operation and the time the server processes the command. If the server does not support the UIDPLUS capability, the client should fall back to using the STORE command to temporarily remove the \Deleted flag from messages it does not want to remove. The client could alternatively fall back to using the EXPUNGE command, risking the unintended removal of some messages. Example: C: A003 UID EXPUNGE 3000:3002 S: * 3 EXPUNGE S: * 3 EXPUNGE S: * 3 EXPUNGE S: A003 OK UID EXPUNGE completed 2. Additional Response Codes The following response codes are extensions to the response codes defined in [IMAP] section 7.1. With limited exceptions, discussed below, server implementations that advertise the UIDPLUS extension SHOULD return these response codes. In the case of a mailbox which has permissions set so that the client can COPY or APPEND to the mailbox, but not SELECT or EXAMINE it, the server SHOULD NOT send an APPENDUID or COPYUID response code as it would disclose information about the mailbox. In the case of a mailbox that has UIDNOTSTICKY status (as defined below), the server MAY omit the APPENDUID or COPYUID response code as it is not meaningful. If the server does not return the APPENDUID or COPYUID response codes, the client can discover this information by selecting the destination mailbox. The location of messages placed in the destination mailbox by COPY or APPEND can be determined by using FETCH and/or SEARCH commands (e.g. for Message-ID or some unique marker placed in the message in an APPEND). APPENDUID Followed by the UIDVALIDITY of the destination mailbox and the UID assigned to the appended message in the destination mailbox, indicates that the message has been appended to the destination mailbox with that UID. If the server also supports the [MULTIAPPEND] extension, and if multiple messages were appended in the APPEND command, then the second value is a UID set containing the UIDs assigned to the appended messages, in the order they were transmitted in the APPEND command. This UID set may not contain extraneous UIDs or the symbol "*". Note: the UID set form of the APPENDUID response code MUST NOT be used if only a single message was appended. In particular, a server MUST NOT send a range such as 123:123. This is because a client which does not support [MULTIAPPEND] expects only a single UID and not a UID set. UIDs are assigned strictly ascending in the mailbox (refer to [IMAP], section 2.3.1.1) and UID ranges are as in [IMAP]; in particular, note that a range of 12:10 is exactly equivalent to 10:12 and refers to the sequence 10,11,12. This response code is returned in a tagged OK response to the APPEND command. COPYUID Followed by the UIDVALIDITY of the destination mailbox, a UID set containing the UIDs of the message(s) in the source mailbox which were copied to the destination mailbox, and a UID set containing the UIDs assigned to the copied message(s) in the destination mailbox, indicates that the message(s) have been copied to the destination mailbox with the stated UID(s). The source UID set is in the order the message(s) were copied; the destination UID set corresponds to the source UID set and is in the same order. Neither of the UID sets may contain extraneous UIDs or the symbol "*". UIDs are assigned strictly ascending in the mailbox (refer to [IMAP], section 2.3.1.1) and UID ranges are as in [IMAP]; in particular, note that a range of 12:10 is exactly equivalent to 10:12 and refers to the sequence 10,11,12. This response code is returned in a tagged OK response to the COPY command. UIDNOTSTICKY The selected mailbox is supported by a mail store which does not support persistent UIDs; that is, UIDVALIDITY will be different each time the mailbox is selected. Consequently, APPEND or COPY to this mailbox will not return an APPENDUID or COPYUID response code. This response code is returned in an untagged NO response to the SELECT command. Note: servers SHOULD NOT have any UIDNOTSTICKY mail stores. This facility exists to support legacy mail stores in which it is technically infeasible to support persistant UIDs. This should be avoided when designing new mail stores. Example: C: A003 APPEND saved-messages (\Seen) {297} C: Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 21:52:25 -0800 (PST) C: From: Fred Foobar C: Subject: afternoon meeting C: To: mooch@example.com C: Message-Id: C: MIME-Version: 1.0 C: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII C: C: Hello Joe, do you think we can meet at 3:30 tomorrow? C: S: A003 OK [APPENDUID 38505 3955] APPEND completed C: A004 COPY 2:4 meeting S: A004 OK [COPYUID 38505 304,319:320 3956:3958] Done C: A005 UID COPY 305:310 meeting S: A005 OK No matching messages, so nothing copied C: A006 COPY 2 funny S: A006 OK Done C: A007 SELECT funny S: * 1 EXISTS S: * 1 RECENT S: * OK [UNSEEN 1] Message 1 is first unseen S: * OK [UIDVALIDITY 3857529045] Validity session-only S: * OK [UIDNEXT 2] Predicted next UID S: * NO [UIDNOTSTICKY] Non-persistent UIDs S: * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft) S: * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Deleted \Seen)] Limited S: A007 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed In this example, A003 and A004 demonstrate successful appending and copying to a mailbox which returns the UIDs assigned to the messages. A005 is an example in which no messages were copied; this is because in A003 we see that message 2 had UID 304 and message 3 had UID 319; therefore UIDs 305 through 310 do not exist (refer to section 2.3.1.1 of [IMAP] for further explanation). A006 is an example of a message being copied that did not return a COPYUID; and as expected A007 shows that the mail store containing that mailbox does not support persistent UIDs. 5. Formal Syntax Formal syntax is defined using ABNF [ABNF], extending the ABNF rules defined in [IMAP4]. The IMAP4 ABNF should be imported first before attempting to validate these rules. append-uid = uniqueid capability =/ "UIDPLUS" command-select =/ uid-expunge resp-code-apnd = "APPENDUID" SP nz-number SP append-uid resp-code-copy = "COPYUID" SP nz-number SP uid-set SP uid-set resp-text-code =/ resp-code-apnd / resp-code-copy / "UIDNOTSTICKY" ; incorporated before the expansion rule of ; atom [SP 1*] ; which appears in [IMAP] uid-expunge = "UID" SP "EXPUNGE" SP sequence-set uid-set = (uniqueid / uid-range) *("," uid-set) uid-range = (uniqueid ":" uniqueid) ; two uniqueid values and all values ; between these two regards of order. ; Example: 2:4 and 4:2 are equivalent. Servers which support [MULTIAPPEND] will have the following extension to the above rules: append-uid =/ uid-set ; only permitted if client uses [MULTIAPPEND] ; to append multiple messages. Security Considerations The COPYUID and APPENDUID response codes return information about the mailbox. These response codes SHOULD NOT be issused if the client does not have access to SELECT or EXAMINE the mailbox. IANA Considerations This document constitutes registration of the UIDPLUS capability in the imap4-capabilities registry, replacing RFC 2359. Normative References [ABNF] Crocker, D. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax Specifications: ABNF", RFC 2234, November 1997. [IMAP] Crispin, M., "Internet Message Access Protocol - Version 4rev1", RFC 3501, March 2003. [KEYWORDS] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [MULTIAPPEND] Crispin, M., "Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) - MULTIAPPEND Extension", RFC 3502, March 2003. [RFC-2822] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April 2001. Informative References [RFC-2359] Myers, J., "IMAP4 UIDPLUS extension", RFC 2359, June 1988. Acknowledgements This document obsoletes [RFC-2359]. However, it is based upon that document, and takes substantial text from it. Author's Address Mark R. Crispin Networks and Distributed Computing University of Washington 4545 15th Avenue NE Seattle, WA 98105-4527 Phone: (206) 543-5762 EMail: MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU IPR Disclosure Acknowledgement By submitting this Internet-Draft, I certify that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which I am aware have been disclosed, and any of which I become aware will be disclosed, in accordance with RFC 3668. Intellectual Property Statement The IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any intellectual property or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; neither does it represent that it has made any effort to identify any such rights. 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