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<h1 align="center">Allegro CL imap and pop interface</h1>
<p align="left">copyright (c) Franz Inc.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong>imap</strong> is a client-server protocol for processing
electronic mail boxes. <strong>imap </strong>is the successor to the <strong>pop</strong>
protocol. It is <strong>not</strong> an upward compatible successor.
The main focus of this document is the <strong>imap</strong>
protocol. Only one small section describes the functions in the <strong>pop</strong>
interface.</p>
<p align="left">The contents of this document are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p align="left">the <strong>imap</strong> interface</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><a href="#pop">the <strong>pop</strong> interface</a></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><a href="#conditions">the <strong>conditions</strong> signaled by the <strong>imap</strong>
and <strong>pop</strong> interfaces.</a></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><a href="#smtp">the <strong>smtp</strong> interface</a> (used for
sending mail)</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left">The imap interface is based on the Imap4rev1 protocol described in
rfc2060. Where this document is describing the actions of the imap commands it
should be considered a secondary source of information about those commands and rfc2060
should be considered the primary source.</p>
<p align="left">The advantages of <strong>imap</strong> over <strong>pop</strong> are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p align="left"><strong>imap </strong>can work with multiple mailboxes (<strong>pop </strong>works
with a single mailbox)</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left">With <strong>imap</strong> you're encouraged to leave mail in mailboxes
on the server machine, thus it can be read from any machine on the network.
With <strong>pop</strong> you're encouraged to download the mail to the client machine's
disk, and it thus becomes inaccessible to all other client machines.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>imap</strong> parses the headers of messages thus allowing
easier analysis of mail messages by the client program.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>imap</strong> supports searching messages for data and sorting
by date.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>imap </strong>supports annotating messages with flags, thus
making subsequent searching easier.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Package</h1>
<p align="left">The functions in this interface are defined in the <strong>net.post-office</strong>
package. The previous version of this module gave this package the <strong>po</strong>
nickname. We've removed that nickname to reduce the possibility of clashing with
user-defined packages. You are free to add that nickname back if you so desire.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Mailboxes</h1>
<p align="left">Mailboxes are repositories for messages. Mailboxes are named
by Lisp strings. The mailbox "inbox" always exists and it is the mailbox
in which new messages are stored. New mailboxes can be created.
They can have simple names, like "foo" or they can have
hierarchical names (like "clients/california/widgetco"). After
connecting to an imap server you can determine what string of characters you must use
between simple names to create a hierarchical name (in this example "/" was the
separator character). </p>
<p align="left">Each mailbox has an associated unique number called its <strong>uidvalidity</strong>.
This number won't change as long as <strong>imap</strong> is the only
program used to manipulate the mailbox. In fact if you see that the number has
changed then that means that some other program has done something to the mailbox that
destroyed the information that <strong>imap</strong> had been keeping about the
mailbox. In particular you can't now retrieve messages by their unique
ids that you had used before.</p>
<h1 align="left">Messages</h1>
<p align="left">Messages in a mailbox can be denoted in one of two ways: message
sequence number or unique id. </p>
<p align="left">The <em>message sequence number</em> is the normal way. The messages
in a mailbox are numbered from 1 to N where N is the number of messages in the mailbox.
There are never any gaps in the sequence numbers. If you tell <strong>imap</strong>
to delete messages 3,4 and 5 then it will return a value telling you the it has deleted
messages 3,3 and 3. This is because when you deleted message 3, message 4 became the
new message 3 just before it was deleted and then message 5 became message 3 just before
it was deleted.</p>
<p align="left">A <em>unique id </em>of a message is a number associated with a message
that is unique only within a mailbox. As long as the uidvalidity value of a
mailbox doesn't change, the unique ids used in deleted messages will never be reused for
new messages. </p>
<h1 align="left">Flags</h1>
<p align="left">A flag is a symbol denoting that a message or mailbox has a certain
property. We use keywords in Lisp to denote flags. There are two
kinds of flags - System and User flags. System flags begin with the backslash
character, which is an unfortunate design decision since that means that in Lisp we
have to remember to use two backslashes (e.g. <strong>:\\deleted</strong>).
A subset of the flags can be stored permanently in the mailbox with the
messages. When a connection is made to an <strong>imap</strong> server it will
return the list of flags and permanent flags (and these are stored in the mailbox object
returned for access by the program). If the list of permanent flags includes <strong>:\\*</strong>
then the program can create its own flag names (not beginning with a backslash) and can
store them permanently in messages.</p>
<p align="left">Some of the important system flags are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:\\seen</strong> - this means that the message has been read
(a <strong>fetch-letter</strong> has been done that includes the content of the
message, not just its headers)</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:\\deleted </strong>- the message will be deleted the next time
an <strong>expunge-mailbox</strong> or <strong>close-mailbox</strong> is done.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:\\recent </strong>- this is the first session to have been
notified about this message being present in the mailbox.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Connecting to the server</h1>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New">(<strong>make-imap-connection host &key user
password port timeout)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">This creates a connection to the <strong>imap</strong> server on machine <strong>host</strong>
and logs in as <strong>user </strong>with password <strong>password. </strong>The
<strong>port</strong> argument defaults to143, which is the port on which the <strong>imap</strong>
server normally listens. The <strong>timeout</strong> argument defaults
to 30 (seconds) and this value is used to limit the amount of time this imap interface
code will wait for a response from the server before giving up. In
certain circumstances the server may get so busy that you see timeout errors signaled in
this code. In that case you should specify a larger timeout when connecting. </p>
<p align="left">The <strong>make-imap-connection</strong> function returns a <strong>mailbox</strong>
object which is then passed to other functions in this interface. From this
one connection you can access all of the mailboxes owned by <strong>user</strong>.</p>
<p align="left">After the connection is established a mailbox is <strong>not</strong>
selected. In this state attempting to execute message access functions may
result in cryptic error messages from the <strong>imap</strong> server that won't tell you
what you need to know -- that a mailbox is not selected. Therefore be sure to
select a mailbox using <strong>select-mailbox</strong> shortly after connecting.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong><font face="Courier New">(close-connection mailbox)</font></strong></p>
<p align="left">This sends a <strong>logout</strong> command to the <strong>imap</strong>
server and then closes the socket that's communicating with the <strong>imap</strong>
server. <strong>mailbox </strong>is the object returned by <strong>make-imap-connection.</strong>
This does <em>not</em> close the currently select mailbox before logging out,
thus messages marked to be deleted in the currently selected mailbox will <em>not</em> be
removed from the mailbox. Use <strong>close-mailbox</strong> or <strong>expunge-mailbox</strong>
before calling this <strong>close-connection</strong> to ensure that messages to be
deleted are deleted.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Mailbox manipulation</h1>
<p align="left">These functions work on mailboxes as a whole. The <strong>mailbox</strong>
argument to the functions is is the object returned by <strong>make-imap-connection.
</strong>If a return value isn't specified for a function then the return value
isn't important - if something goes wrong an error will be signaled.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(select-mailbox mailbox name)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">makes the mailbox named by the string <strong>name</strong> be the current
mailbox and store statistics about that mailbox in the <strong>mailbox</strong> object
where they can be retrieved by the accessors described below. The
selected mailbox is the source for all message manipulation functions.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(create-mailbox mailbox name)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">creates a new mailbox with the given <strong>name</strong>. It
is an error if the mailbox already exists. If you want to create a mailbox in a
hierarchy then you should be sure that it uses the correct hierarchy separator character
string (see <strong>mailbox-separator)</strong>. You do <strong>not</strong>
have to create intermediate levels of the hierarchy yourself -- just provide the
complete name and the <strong>imap</strong> server will create all necessary levels.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(delete-mailbox mailbox name)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">deletes the mailbox with the given name.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(rename-mailbox mailbox old-name
new-name)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">changes the name of mailbox <strong>old-name</strong> to <strong>new-name</strong>.
It's an error if <strong>new-name</strong> already exists. There's a special
behavior if <strong>old-name</strong> is "inbox". In this case all of the
messages in "inbox" are moved to <strong>new-name </strong>mailbox, but the
"inbox" mailbox continues to exist. Note: The <strong>imap </strong>server
supplied with Linux does <strong>not</strong> support this special behavior of renaming
"inbox".</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong><font face="Courier New">(mailbox-list mailbox &key reference
pattern)</font></strong></p>
<p align="left">returns a list of items describing the mailboxes that match the arguments.
The <strong>reference</strong> is the root of the hierarchy to
scan. By default is is the empty string (from which all mailboxes are reachable).
The <strong>pattern </strong>is a string matched against all mailbox
names reachable from <strong>reference. </strong>There are two special characters allowed
in the <strong>pattern: </strong>Asterisk (*) matches all characters including
hierarchy delimiters. Percent (%) matches all characters but not the hierarchy
delimiter. Thus</p>
<p align="center"><font face="Courier New">(mailbox-list mailbox :pattern "*")</font></p>
<p align="left">returns a list of all mailboxes at all depths in the hierarchy.
</p>
<p align="left">The value returned is a list of lists, but we've created the <strong>mailbox-list
</strong>struct definition in order to make accessing the parts of the inner lists
easier. The accessors for that structure are:</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-list-flags mailbox-list) </strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns the flags describing this entry. The most important
flag to check is <strong>:\\noselect</strong> as this specifies that this is not a mailbox
but instead just a directory in the hierarchy of mailboxes. The flag <strong>:\\noinferiors</strong>
specifies that you can't create a hierarchical mailbox name with this as a prefix.
This flag is often associated with the special mailbox "inbox".</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-list-separator mailbox-list)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns a string containing the characters used to separate names in a
hierarchical name.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-list-name mailbox-list)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns the name of the mailbox or directory (see mailbox-list-flags to
determine which it is).</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Message manipulation</h1>
<p align="left">These functions work with the messages in the currently selected mailbox.
The <strong>mailbox</strong> argument is the object returned by <strong>make-imap-connection.</strong>
The <strong>messages</strong> argument is either a number (denoting a single
message), or is the list <strong>(:seq N M) </strong>denoting messages <strong>N</strong>
through <strong>M, </strong>or is a list of numbers and <strong>:seq </strong>forms
denoting the messages specified in the list.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left">(<font face="Courier New"><strong>alter-flags mailbox messages &key
flags add-flags remove-flags silent uid)</strong></font></p>
<p>changes the flags of the messages in the specified way. Exactly one of <strong>flags,
add-flags</strong>, and <strong>remove-flags</strong> must be specified. <strong>flags</strong>
specifies the complete set of flags to be stores in the <strong>messages</strong> and the
other two add or remove flags. If <strong>uid</strong> is true then <strong>messages</strong>
will be interpreted as unique ids rather than message sequence numbers.
Normally <strong>alter-flags</strong> returns a data structure
that describes the state of the flags after the alternation has been done. This data
structure can be examined with the <strong>fetch-field</strong> function.
If <strong>silent</strong> is true then this data structure won't be created
thus saving some time and space.</p>
<p>Removing a message from a mailbox is done by adding the <strong>:\\deleted</strong>
flag to the message and then either calling <strong>close-mailbox </strong>or <strong>expunge-mailbox.</strong></p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(close-mailbox mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p>permanently removes all messages flagged as <strong>:\\deleted</strong> from the
currently selected mailbox and then un-selects the currently selected mailbox. After
this command has finished there is no currently selected mailbox.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong><font face="Courier New">(copy-to-mailbox mailbox messages
destination &key uid)</font></strong></p>
<p align="left">copies the specified <strong>messages </strong>from the currently selected
mailbox to the mailbox named <strong>destination</strong> (given as a string). The
flags are copied as well. The destination mailbox must already exist. The messages
are <strong>not</strong> removed from the selected mailbox after the copy .If <strong>uid</strong>
is true then the <strong>messages</strong> are considered to be unique ids rather than
message sequence numbers. </p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(delete-letter mailbox messages &key
expunge uid</strong></font>)</p>
<p align="left">Mark the <strong>messages</strong> for deletion and then remove them
permanently (using <strong>expunge-mailbox</strong>) if <strong>expunge</strong> is true.
<strong>expunge </strong>defaults to true. If <strong>uid</strong>
is true then the message numbers are unique ids instead of messages sequence numbers.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(expunge-mailbox mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">permanently removes all messages flagged as <strong>:\\deleted</strong>
from the currently selected mailbox. The currently selected mailbox stays
selected.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(fetch-field message part info &key
uid)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">is used to extract the desired information from the value returned by <strong>fetch-letter</strong>.
With <strong>fetch-letter</strong> you can retrieve a variety of
information about one or more messages and <strong>fetch-field</strong> can search though
that information and return a particular piece of information about a particular
letter. <strong>message</strong> is the message number (it's assumed to be a
message sequence number unless <strong>uid </strong>is true, in which case it's a unique
id). <strong>part </strong>is the type of information desired. It is a
string just as used in the call to <strong>fetch-letter</strong>.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong><font face="Courier New">(fetch-letter mailbox message &key
uid)</font></strong></p>
<p align="left">Return the complete message, headers and body, as one big string.
This is a combination of <strong>fetch-field</strong> and <strong>fetch-parts</strong>
where the part specification is "body[]".</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(fetch-parts mailbox messages parts
&key uid)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">retrieves the specified <strong>parts</strong> of the specified <strong>messages.
</strong>If <strong>uid</strong> is true then the <strong>messages</strong>
are considered to be unique ids rather than message sequence numbers.
The description of what can be specified for <strong>parts </strong>is
quite complex and is described in the section below "Fetching a Letter".</p>
<p align="left">The return value from this function is a structure that can be examined
with <strong>fetch-field</strong>.</p>
<p align="left">When the result returned includes an envelope value the following
functions can be used to extract the components of the envelope:</p>
<ul>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-date</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-subject</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-from</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-sender</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-reply-to</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-to</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-cc</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-bcc</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-in-reply-to</strong></font></p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>envelope-message-id</strong></font></p>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong><font face="Courier New">(noop mailbox)</font></strong></p>
<p align="left">does nothing but remind the <strong>imap</strong> server that this
client is still active, thus resetting the timers used in the server that will
automatically shut down this connection after a period of inactivity. Like all
other commands if messages have been added to the currently selected mailbox, the server
will return the new message count as a response to the <strong>noop</strong> command, and
this can be check using <strong>mailbox-message-count</strong>. </p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(search-mailbox mailbox search-expression
&key uid)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">return a list of messages in the mailbox that satisfy the<strong>
search-expression. </strong>If <strong>uid</strong> is true then unique ids
will be returned instead of message sequence numbers. See the section
"Searching for messages" for details on the <strong>search-expression</strong>.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Mailbox Accessors</h1>
<p align="left">The mailbox object contains information about the <strong>imap </strong>server
it's connected to as well as the currently selected mailbox. This information
can potentially be updated each time a request is made to the <strong>imap </strong>server.
The following functions access values from the mailbox object. </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-flags mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns a complete list of flags used in all the messages in this mailbox.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-permanent-flags mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns a list of flags that can be stored permanently in a message.
If the flag <strong>:\\*</strong> is present then it means that the client can
create its own flags.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-message-count mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns the number of messages in the currently selected mailbox</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-recent-messages mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns the number of messages have just arrived in the mailbox.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-separator mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns the hierarchy separator string for this <strong>imap </strong>server.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-uidnext mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns the value predicated to be the unique id assigned to the
next message.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New"><strong>(mailbox-uidvalidty mailbox)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">returns the uidvalidity value for the currently selected mailbox.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Fetching a Letter</h1>
<p align="left">When using <strong>fetch-parts</strong> to access letters, you must
specify the parts of the messages in which you're interested. There are a wide
variety of specifiers, some redundant and overlapping, described in the imap specification
in rfe2060. We'll describe the most common ones here. The specification
is always a string but it may be specified more than one thing by the use of parentheses
in the string, e.g. "(flags envelope)". </p>
<p align="left">The most common specifiers are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p align="left"><strong>body[]</strong> - this returns the full message: headers and
body. You can use <strong>fetch-letter</strong> if you only want this part and
you want to avoid having to call <strong>fetch-field</strong>.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>body[text]</strong> - this returns just the the text of the body
of the message, not the header.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>body</strong> - this returns a list describing the structure of
the message.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>envelope</strong> - this parses the header and returns a list of
information in it. We've defined a set of accessors <strong>(</strong>like<strong>
envelope-xxx</strong>) that allow you to retrieve the envelope information easily.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>flags</strong> - return a list of the flags in the message</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>uid</strong> - the unique identifier of the message</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left">The result of a <strong>fetch-parts</strong> is a data structure
containing all of the requested information. The <strong>fetch-field</strong>
function is then used to extract the particular information for the particular message.</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Searching for Messages</h1>
<p align="left">.The <strong>imap</strong> server is able to search for messages matching
a search expression. A search-expression is a predicate or one of
these forms:</p>
<ul>
<li><p align="left">(<strong>and</strong> search-expression ...)</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left">(<strong>or</strong> search-expression ...)</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left">(<strong>not</strong> search-expression)</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left">A predicate is </p>
<ul>
<li><p align="left">a number in which case the predicate is true if and only if we're are
considering this message</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left">a <strong>(:seq N M)</strong> expression that is true if we're
considering messages N through M.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:all</strong> - this predicate is always true</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:answered</strong> - true if the message has the <strong>:\\answered</strong>
flag</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:bcc "string") </strong>- true if the envelope
structure's bcc field contains this "string".</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:before date)</strong> - true if the messages internal date is
before this date. The date can either be a string in the rfc822 form (e.g.
"7-Mar-1999") or a lisp universal time.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:body "string") </strong>- true if the body of the
message contains "string"</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:cc "string")</strong> - true if the envelope
structure's cc field contains this "string".</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:deleted</strong> - true if the <strong>:\\deleted</strong> flag
is set for this message</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:draft</strong> - true if the <strong>:\\draft </strong>flag is
set for this message</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:flagged </strong>- true if the <strong>:\\flagged</strong> flag
is set for this message</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:from "string")</strong> - true if the envelope
structure's from field contains this "string".</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:header "field" "string")</strong> - true
if the message contains a header named "field" and its value contains
"string".</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:keyword flag)</strong> - true if the specified flag is set for
this message</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:larger N)</strong> - true if the rfc822 size of the message is
larger than N.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:new </strong>- true if the message has the <strong>:\\recent</strong>
flag set but not the <strong>:\\seen </strong>flag.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:seen </strong>- true if the message has the <strong>:\\seen </strong>flag
set.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:sentbefore date)</strong> - true if the message's Date header
is earlier than the given date. See the description of :before for the format of
dates.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:senton date)</strong> - true if the message's Date header is
within the specified date.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:sentsince date) </strong>- true if the message's Date header
is within or since the given date.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:smaller N)</strong> - true if the rfc822 size of the message
is smaller than N</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:subject "string") </strong>- true if the Subject
header line of the message contains "string"</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:text "string") </strong>- true if the message's
header or body contains the specified "string"</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:to "string")</strong> - true if the envelope
structure's to field contains this "string".</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:uid message-set)</strong> - true if the message is one of the
message denoted by the message set, where the message set describes messages by unique id.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:unanswered</strong> - true if the message does not have the <strong>:\\answered</strong>
flag set</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:undeleted</strong> - true if the message does not have the <strong>:\\deleted</strong>
flag set</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:undraft </strong>- true if the message does not have the <strong>:\\draft
</strong>flag set.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:unflagged </strong>- true if the message does not have the <strong>:\\flagged</strong>
flag set.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>(:unkeyword flag)</strong> - true if the message does not have
the specified flag set.</p>
</li>
<li><p align="left"><strong>:unseen </strong>- true if the message does not have the <strong>:\\seen
</strong>flag set.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1 align="left">Examples</h1>
<p align="left">We show an example of using this interface</p>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong>Connect to the imap server on the machine holding the email:</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>user(2): (setq mb (make-imap-connection "mailmachine.franz.com"
:user "myacct"
:password "mypasswd"))
#<mailbox::imap-mailbox @ #x2064ca4a></pre>
</div>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong>Select the inbox, that's where the incoming mail arrives:</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(3): (select-mailbox mb "inbox")
t</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"> </p>
<p align="left"><strong>Check how many messages are in the mailbox:</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(4): (mailbox-message-count mb)
7</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>There are seven messages at the moment. Fetch the
whole 4th message. We could call (fetch-letter mb 4) here instead and then not have
to call fetch-field later.</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(5): (setq body (fetch-parts mb 4 "body[]"))
((4
("BODY[]" "Return-Path: <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>
Received: from tiger.franz.com (jkf@tiger [192.132.95.103])
by tiger.franz.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id LAA20261
for <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 11:36:26 -0700
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 11:36:26 -0700
From: jkf mail tester <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>
Message-Id: <199909131836.LAA20261@tiger.franz.com>
message number 5
")))</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>The value was returned inside a data structure designed to hold
information about one or more messages. In order to extract the particular
information we want we use fetch-field:</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(6): (fetch-field 4 "body[]" body)
"Return-Path: <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>
Received: from tiger.franz.com (jkf@tiger [192.132.95.103])
by tiger.franz.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id LAA20261
for <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 11:36:26 -0700
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 11:36:26 -0700
From: jkf mail tester <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>
Message-Id: <199909131836.LAA20261@tiger.franz.com>
message number 5
"</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>We use the search function to find all the messages containing the
word blitzfig. It turns out there is only one. We then extract the contents of
that message.</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(7): (search-mailbox mb '(:text "blitzfig"))
(7)
user(8): (fetch-field 7 "body[]" (fetch-letter mb 7 "body[]"))
"Return-Path: <jkf@verada.com>
Received: from main.verada.com (main.verada.com [208.164.216.3])
by tiger.franz.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA20541
for <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:37:24 -0700
Received: from main.verada.com (IDENT:jkf@localhost [127.0.0.1])
by main.verada.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA06121
for <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:36:54 -0700
Message-Id: <199909132036.NAA06121@main.verada.com>
To: jkfmail@tiger.franz.com
Subject: s test
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:36:54 -0700
From: jkf <jkf@verada.com>
secret word: blitzfig
ok?
"</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>We've been using message sequence numbers up to now.
The are the simplest to use but if you're concerned with keeping track of messages when
deletions are being done then using unique id's is useful. Here we do the
above search example using uids:</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(9): (search-mailbox mb '(:text "blitzfig") :uid t)
(68)
user(10): (fetch-field 68 "body[]" (fetch-letter mb 68 "body[]" :uid t) :uid t)
"Return-Path: <jkf@verada.com>
Received: from main.verada.com (main.verada.com [208.164.216.3])
by tiger.franz.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id NAA20541
for <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:37:24 -0700
Received: from main.verada.com (IDENT:jkf@localhost [127.0.0.1])
by main.verada.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA06121
for <jkfmail@tiger.franz.com>; Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:36:54 -0700
Message-Id: <199909132036.NAA06121@main.verada.com>
To: jkfmail@tiger.franz.com
Subject: s test
Date: Mon, 13 Sep 1999 13:36:54 -0700
From: jkf <jkf@verada.com>
secret word: blitzfig
ok?
"</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>We'll delete that letter with the secret word and then note that
we have only six messages in the mailbox.</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(11): (delete-letter mb 68 :uid t)
(7)
user(12): (mailbox-message-count mb)
6</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>Now we assume that a bit of time has passed and we want to see if
any new messages have been delivered into the mailbox. In order to find out we
have to send a command to the imap server since it will only notify us of new messages
when it responds to a command. Since we have nothing to ask the imap server to
do we issue the noop command, which does nothing on the server.</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(13): (noop mb)
nil
user(14): (mailbox-message-count mb)
7</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>The server told us that there are now 7 messages in the inbox, one
more than before. Next we create a new mailbox, copy the messages from the inbox to
the new mailbox and then delete them from the inbox. Note how we use the :seq form
to specify a sequence of messages.</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(15): (create-mailbox mb "tempbox")
t
user(18): (let ((count (mailbox-message-count mb)))
(copy-to-mailbox mb `(:seq 1 ,count) "tempbox")
(delete-letter mb `(:seq 1 ,count)))
(1 1 1 1 1 1 1)
user(19): (mailbox-message-count mb)
0</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>When we're done there are 0 messages in the currently selected
mailbox, which is inbox. We now select the maibox we just created and see that the
messages are there.</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(22): (select-mailbox mb "tempbox")
t
user(23): (mailbox-message-count mb)
7</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"><strong>Finally we shut down the connection. Note that imap
servers will automatically shut down a connection that's been idle for too long (usually
around 10 minutes). When that happens, the next time the client tries to use an imap
function to access the mailbox an error will occur. There is nothing that can
be done to revive the connection however it is important to call close-imap-connection on
the lisp side in order to free up the resources still in use for the now dead connection.</strong></p>
<div align="left">
<pre>
user(24): (close-connection mb)
t
</pre>
</div>
<p align="left"> </p>
<h1><a name="pop"></a>The Pop interface</h1>
<p>The <strong>pop</strong> protocol is a very simple means for retrieving messages from a
single mailbox. The functions in the interface are:</p>
<p> </p>
<p align="left"><font face="Courier New">(<strong>make-pop-connection host &key user
password port timeout)</strong></font></p>
<p align="left">This creates a connection to the <strong>pop</strong> server on machine <strong>host</strong>
and logs in as <strong>user </strong>with password <strong>password. </strong>The
<strong>port</strong> argument defaults to 110, which is the port on which the <strong>pop</strong>
server normally listens. The <strong>timeout</strong> argument defaults
to 30 (seconds) and this value is used to limit the amount of time this pop interface code
will wait for a response from the server before giving up. In certain
circumstances the server may get so busy that you see timeout errors signaled in this
code. In that case you should specify a larger timeout when connecting. </p>
<p>The value returned by this function is a <strong>mailbox</strong> object. You can
call <strong>mailbox-message-count</strong> on the <strong>mailbox</strong> object to
determine how many letters are currently stored in the mailbox.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(close-connection mb)</strong></font></p>
<p>Disconnect from the pop server. All messages marked for deletion will be deleted.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><strong><font face="Courier New">(delete-letter mb messages)</font></strong></p>
<p>Mark the specified <strong>messages</strong> for deletion. <strong>mb </strong>is
the mailbox object returned by <strong>make-pop-connection</strong>. The messages
are only marked for deletion. They are not removed until a <strong>close-connection</strong>
is done. If the connection to the <strong>pop</strong> server is broken before a <strong>close-connection</strong>
is done, the messages will <strong>not</strong> be deleted and they will no longer be
marked for deletion either.</p>
<p><strong>messages</strong> can either be a message number, a list of the form <strong>(:seq
N M)</strong> meaning messages <strong>N </strong>through <strong>M </strong>or it can be
a list of message numbers and/or <strong>:seq </strong>specifiers. The
messages in a mailbox are numbered starting with one. Marking a message for deletion
does not affect the numbering of other messages in the mailbox.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(fetch-letter mb message)</strong></font></p>
<p>Fetch from the pop server connection <strong>mb</strong> the letter numbered <strong>message</strong>.
The letters in a mailbox are numbered starting with one. The entire
message, including the headers, is returned as a string. It is an
error to attempt to fetch a letter marked for deletion.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(make-envelope-from-text text)</strong></font></p>
<p><strong>text</strong> is a string that is the first part of a mail message, including
at least all of the headers lines and the blank line following the headers. This
function parses the header lines and return an <strong>envelope</strong> structure
containing information from the header. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(noop mb)</strong></font></p>
<p>This is the no-operation command. It is useful for letting the <strong>pop</strong>
server know that this connection should be kept alive (<strong>pop </strong>servers tend
to disconnect after a few minutes of inactivity). In order to make <strong>noop</strong>
have behavior similar to that of the <strong>imap</strong> version of <strong>noop</strong>,
we don't send a 'noop' command to the pop server, instead we send a 'stat' command.
This means that after this command is completed the <strong>mailbox-message-count</strong>
will contain the current count of messages in the mailbox.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(parse-mail-header text)</strong></font></p>
<p><strong>text</strong> is a string that is the first part of a mail message, including
at least all of the headers lines and the blank line following the headers. This
function parses the header lines and returns an assoc list where each item has the form <strong>(header
. value)</strong>. Both the <strong>header</strong> and <strong>value</strong>
are strings. Note that header names will most likely be mixed case (but this is not
a requirment) so you'll want to use <strong>:test #'equalp</strong> when searching for a
particular header with <strong>assoc</strong>. <strong>parse-mail-header</strong>
returns as a second value a string that is everything after the headers (which is often
referred to as the body of the message).</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(top-lines mb message line-count)</strong></font></p>
<p>Return a string that contains all the header lines and the first <strong>line-count</strong>
lines of the body of <strong>message</strong>. To just retrieve the headers a <strong>line-count</strong>
of zero can be given. See the function <strong>make-envelope-from-text</strong> for
a means of reading the information in the header.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(unique-id mb &optional message)</strong></font></p>
<p>Return the unique indentifier for the given message, or for all non-deleted messages if
<strong>message</strong> is nil. The unique identifier is is a string that is
different for every message. If the <strong>message</strong> argument is
not given then this command returns a list of lists where each list contains two items:
the message number and the unique id.</p>
<h1>Cond<a name="conditions"></a>itions</h1>
<p>When an unexpected event occurs a condition is signaled. This applies to
both the <strong>imap</strong> and <strong>pop</strong> interfaces. There are two
classes of conditions signaled by this package:
<ul>
<li><strong>po-condition</strong> - this class denotes conditions that need not and in fact
should not interrupt program flow. When the mailbox server is responding to a
command it sometimes sends informational warning messages and we turn them into
conditions. It's important for all messages from the server to be read
and processed otherwise the next command issued will see messages in response to the
previous command. Therefore the user code should never do a non-local-transfer
in response to a <strong>po-condition.</strong></li>
<li><strong>po-error - </strong>this class denotes conditions that will prevent execution
from continuing. If one of these errors is not caught, the interactive debugger will
be entered.</li>
</ul>
<p>Instances of both of these condition classes have these slots in addition to the
standard condition slots: </p>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="16%">Name</td>
<td width="24%">Accessor</td>
<td width="60%">Value</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="16%">identifier</td>
<td width="24%">po-condition-identifier</td>
<td width="60%">keyword describing the kind of condition being signaled. See the
table below for the possible values.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="16%">server-string</td>
<td width="24%">po-condition-server-string</td>
<td width="60%">If the condition was created because of a messages sent from the mailbox
server then this is that message.</td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>The meaning of the identifier value is as follows</p>
<table border="1" width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>Identifier</strong></td>
<td width="13%">Kind</td>
<td width="76%">Meaning</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:problem</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-condition</td>
<td width="76%">The server has responded with a warning message. The most
likely warning is that the mailbox can only be opened in read-only mode due to another
processing using it.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:unknown-ok</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-condition</td>
<td width="76%">The server has sent an informative message that we don't understand.
It's probably safe to ignore this.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:unknown-untagged</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-condition</td>
<td width="76%">The server has sent an informative message that we don't understand.
It's probably safe to ignore this.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:error-response</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-error</td>
<td width="76%">The server cannot execute the requested command.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:syntax-error</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-error</td>
<td width="76%">The arguments to a function in this package are malformed.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:unexpected</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-error</td>
<td width="76%">The server has responded a way we don't understand and which prevents us
from continuing</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:server-shutdown-connection</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-error</td>
<td width="76%">The connection to the server has been broken. This usually occurs
when the connection has been idle for too long and the server intentionally disconnects.
Just before this condition is signaled we close down the socket connection to
free up the socket resource on our side. When this condition is signaled the user
program should not use the mailbox object again (even to call <strong>close-connection</strong>
on it).</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td width="11%"><strong>:timeout</strong></td>
<td width="13%">po-error</td>
<td width="76%">The server did not respond quickly enough. The timeout value
is set in the call to <strong>make-imap-connection.</strong></td>
</tr>
</table>
<h1><a name="smtp"></a>The smtp interface</h1>
<p>With the smtp interface, a Lisp program can contact a mail server and send electronic
mail. The contents of the message must be a simple text string. There is
no provision for encoding binary data and sending it as a Mime attachment.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(send-letter mail-server from to message &key
subject reply-to)</strong></font></p>
<p><strong>mail-server</strong> can be a string naming a machine or an integer IP address.
The <strong>mail-server</strong> is contacted and asked to send a <strong>message</strong>
(a string) <strong>from</strong> a given email address <strong>to</strong> a given email
address or list of addresses. The email addresses must be of the form
"foo" or <a href="mailto:foo@bar.com">"foo@bar.com"</a>. You can
<strong>not</strong> use addresses like <a href="mailto:Joe%20%3cfoo@bar.com%3e">"Joe
<foo@bar.com>"</a> or <a href="mailto:(Joe)%20foo@bar.com">"(Joe)
foo@bar.com"</a>. </p>
<p>A mail header is built and prepended to the <strong>message</strong> before it is sent.
The mail header includes a <strong>From </strong>and <strong>To</strong> line and
will optionally include a <strong>Subject</strong> and <strong>Reply-To</strong>
line if those are given in the call to <strong>send-letter.</strong>.</p>
<p>The text of the <strong>message</strong> should be lines separated by #\newline's.
The <strong>smtp</strong> interface will automatically insert the necessary
#\returns's when it transmits the message to the mail server.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><font face="Courier New"><strong>(send-smtp mail-server from to &rest messages)</strong></font></p>
<p><strong>mail-server</strong> can be a string naming a machine or an integer IP address.
The <strong>mail-server</strong> is contacted and asked to send a message <strong>from</strong>
a given email address <strong>to</strong> a given email address or list of addresses.
The email addresses must be of the form "foo" or <a
href="mailto:foo@bar.com">"foo@bar.com"</a>. You can <strong>not</strong>
use addresses like <a href="mailto:Joe%20%3cfoo@bar.com%3e">"Joe
<foo@bar.com>"</a> or <a href="mailto:(Joe)%20foo@bar.com">"(Joe)
foo@bar.com"</a>. </p>
<p>The message sent is a concatenation of all of the <strong>messages</strong> (which
should be strings). A header is <strong>not</strong> prepended to the message.
This means that the application program can build its own header if it wants to
include in that header more than <strong>send-letter</strong> supports (e.g. a Mime
encoded attachment). If no header is provided then some mail servers (e.g. <strong>sendmail</strong>)
will notice this fact and will automatically create a header.</p>
<p>The text of the <strong>messages</strong> should be lines separated by #\newline's.
The <strong>smtp</strong> interface will automatically insert the necessary
#\returns's when it transmits the message to the mail server.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
</body>
</html>