Package com.sun.mail.imap

An IMAP protocol provider for the JavaMail API that provides access to an IMAP message store.

See:
          Description

Interface Summary
IMAPFolder.ProtocolCommand A simple interface for user-defined IMAP protocol commands.
 

Class Summary
ACL An access control list entry for a particular authentication identifier (user or group).
IMAPFolder This class implements an IMAP folder.
IMAPFolder.FetchProfileItem A fetch profile item for fetching headers.
IMAPSSLStore This class provides access to an IMAP message store over SSL.
IMAPStore This class provides access to an IMAP message store.
Rights The Rights class represents the set of rights for an authentication identifier (for instance, a user or a group).
Rights.Right This inner class represents an individual right.
 

Package com.sun.mail.imap Description

An IMAP protocol provider for the JavaMail API that provides access to an IMAP message store. Both the IMAP4 and IMAP4rev1 protocols are supported. Refer to RFC 2060 for more information.

The IMAP protocol provider can use SASL (RFC 2222) authentication mechanisms on systems that support the javax.security.sasl APIs, such as J2SE 5.0. In addition to the SASL mechanisms that are built into the SASL implementation, users can also provide additional SASL mechanisms of their own design to support custom authentication schemes. See the Java SASL API Programming and Deployment Guide for details. Note that the current implementation doesn't support SASL mechanisms that provide their own integrity or confidentiality layer.

A connected IMAPStore maintains a pool of IMAP protocol objects for use in communicating with the IMAP server. The IMAPStore will create the initial AUTHENTICATED connection and seed the pool with this connection. As folders are opened and new IMAP protocol objects are needed, the IMAPStore will provide them from the connection pool, or create them if none are available. When a folder is closed, its IMAP protocol object is returned to the connection pool if the pool is not over capacity.

A mechanism is provided for timing out idle connection pool IMAP protocol objects. Timed out connections are closed and removed (pruned) from the connection pool.

The connected IMAPStore object may or may not maintain a separate IMAP protocol object that provides the store a dedicated connection to the IMAP server. This is provided mainly for compatibility with previous implementations of the IMAP protocol provider.

The IMAP protocol provider supports the following properties, which may be set in the JavaMail Session object. The properties are always set as strings; the Type column describes how the string is interpreted. For example, use

        props.put("mail.imap.port", "888");
to set the mail.imap.port property, which is of type int.

Name Type Description
mail.imap.user String Default user name for IMAP.
mail.imap.host String The IMAP server to connect to.
mail.imap.port int The IMAP server port to connect to, if the connect() method doesn't explicitly specify one. Defaults to 143.
mail.imap.partialfetch boolean Controls whether the IMAP partial-fetch capability should be used. Defaults to true.
mail.imap.fetchsize int Partial fetch size in bytes. Defaults to 16K.
mail.imap.connectiontimeout int Socket connection timeout value in milliseconds. Default is infinite timeout.
mail.imap.timeout int Socket I/O timeout value in milliseconds. Default is infinite timeout.
mail.imap.statuscachetimeout int Timeout value in milliseconds for cache of STATUS command response. Default is 1000 (1 second). Zero disables cache.
mail.imap.appendbuffersize int Maximum size of a message to buffer in memory when appending to an IMAP folder. If not set, or set to -1, there is no maximum and all messages are buffered. If set to 0, no messages are buffered. If set to (e.g.) 8192, messages of 8K bytes or less are buffered, larger messages are not buffered. Buffering saves cpu time at the expense of short term memory usage. If you commonly append very large messages to IMAP mailboxes you might want to set this to a moderate value (1M or less).
mail.imap.connectionpoolsize int Maximum number of available connections in the connection pool. Default is 1.
mail.imap.connectionpooltimeout int Timeout value in milliseconds for connection pool connections. Default is 45000 (45 seconds).
mail.imap.separatestoreconnection boolean Flag to indicate whether to use a dedicated store connection for store commands. Default is false.
mail.imap.allowreadonlyselect boolean If false, attempts to open a folder read/write will fail if the SELECT command succeeds but indicates that the folder is READ-ONLY. This sometimes indicates that the folder contents can'tbe changed, but the flags are per-user and can be changed, such as might be the case for public shared folders. If true, such open attempts will succeed, allowing the flags to be changed. The getMode method on the Folder object will return Folder.READ_ONLY in this case even though the open method specified Folder.READ_WRITE. Default is false.
mail.imap.auth.login.disable boolean If true, prevents use of the non-standard AUTHENTICATE LOGIN command, instead using the plain LOGIN command. Default is false.
mail.imap.auth.plain.disable boolean If true, prevents use of the AUTHENTICATE PLAIN command. Default is false.
mail.imap.starttls.enable boolean If true, enables the use of the STARTTLS command (if supported by the server) to switch the connection to a TLS-protected connection before issuing any login commands. Note that an appropriate trust store must configured so that the client will trust the server's certificate. This feature only works on J2SE 1.4 and newer systems. Default is false.
mail.imap.localaddress String Local address (host name) to bind to when creating the IMAP socket. Defaults to the address picked by the Socket class. Should not normally need to be set, but useful with multi-homed hosts where it's important to pick a particular local address to bind to.
mail.imap.localport int Local port number to bind to when creating the IMAP socket. Defaults to the port number picked by the Socket class.
mail.imap.sasl.enable boolean If set to true, attempt to use the javax.security.sasl package to choose an authentication mechanism for login. Defaults to false.
mail.imap.sasl.mechanisms String A space or comma separated list of SASL mechanism names to try to use.
mail.imap.sasl.authorizationid String The authorization ID to use in the SASL authentication. If not set, the authentication ID (user name) is used.
mail.imap.socketFactory.class String If set, specifies the name of a class that implements the javax.net.SocketFactory interface. This class will be used to create IMAP sockets.
mail.imap.socketFactory.fallback boolean If set to true, failure to create a socket using the specified socket factory class will cause the socket to be created using the java.net.Socket class. Defaults to true.
mail.imap.socketFactory.port int Specifies the port to connect to when using the specified socket factory. If not set, the default port will be used.

In general, applications should not need to use the classes in this package directly. Instead, they should use the APIs defined by javax.mail package (and subpackages). Applications should never construct instances of IMAPStore or IMAPFolder directly. Instead, they should use the Session method getStore to acquire an appropriate Store object, and from that acquire Folder objects.

WARNING: The APIs unique to this package should be considered EXPERIMENTAL. They may be changed in the future in ways that are incompatible with applications using the current APIs.