Atmospherian's Dev Blog

So i’ve beena bit quiet about InterIMAP lately, but that doesn’t mean i haven’t been working on it. Today i will be checking in the latest update of the code which includes some really cool functionality, as well as a new IMAPShell project.

Code Updates

• Added support for retrieving and parsing message structure and content
• Fix some locking issues in the DataManager to make multi-threading work better
• Added support for retrieving and updating message flags
• Added a Log Aggregator that collects the logging information from all worker threads
• Improved the parsing of email addresses
• Added support for decoding message content in the correct format
• Added support to all requests to monitor the amount of data received to facilitate progress indicators
• Added the FullMessageRequest which will asynchronously retrieve the header, structure and all parts of a message while providing progress indication.
• Added lots of functionality to the GUITest app including a message viewer to test how a message will appear.

IMAPShell Project

There is a new project in the solution called IMAPShell, and as the name implies, it is a console command shell that allows CLI style interaction with the IMAP library. The goal of the project is to provide a quick and easy way to access message information without having to configure an email client.

It is in its early stages but you can already connect to a server, navigate the directory structure of a mailbox using dir/cd commands and list the messages in a folder using the list command. Command help is fully integrated.

What’s Next

Here is a list of what i will be working on for the next update:

• Support for creating/deleting folders
• Support for copying/moving messages
• Support for saving/loading messages and attachments to a local file
• Support for easily detecting new messages in any folder

1. David says:

   May 9, 2009 at 3:20 pm

   Hey, thanks for your work on this…. just discovered it. I’m curious if you could post a few samples of how you use this? Maybe a run through of pulling in a list of messages from a particular folder and then reading that message?

   I’m wanting to create an application for my 4 year old son so he can safely send and receive email to me while I’m at work. I’ll be restricting who he can send to and receive from and using a Google Apps (gmail) account.

   Thanks again!
2. David says:

   May 9, 2009 at 3:21 pm

   [ignore me] Just including email so I can get follow up comments. [/ignore me]
3. David says:

   May 16, 2009 at 2:15 pm

   Still curious if you have any samples of how you use this library in your code.

   Thanks.
4. atmospherian says:

   July 9, 2009 at 6:04 pm

   There are two projects in the solution, one GUI and one console that demonstrate how the library can be used. The GUI version shows how the library is best used in asynchronous scenarios where the UI must continue to be responsive while IMAP commands are processing, and the console (IMAPShell) shows how the library can be used in a more synchronous way where execution of the program waits for IMAP commands to finish. Depending your project and how you intend to use the IMAP library either of the methods (or a combination thereof) could be useful to you.