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rfc:rfc3502

Network Working Group M. Crispin Request for Comments: 3502 University of Washington Category: Standards Track March 2003

  Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) - MULTIAPPEND Extension

Status of this Memo

 This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
 Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
 improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
 Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
 and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

 This document describes the multiappending extension to the Internet
 Message Access Protocol (IMAP) (RFC 3501).  This extension provides
 substantial performance improvements for IMAP clients which upload
 multiple messages at a time to a mailbox on the server.
 A server which supports this extension indicates this with a
 capability name of "MULTIAPPEND".

Terminology

 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].

Introduction

 The MULTIAPPEND extension permits uploading of multiple messages with
 a single command.  When used in conjunction with the [LITERAL+]
 extension, the entire upload is accomplished in a single
 command/response round trip.
 A MULTIAPPEND APPEND operation is atomic; either all messages are
 successfully appended, or no messages are appended.
 In the base IMAP specification, each message must be appended in a
 separate command, and there is no mechanism to "unappend" messages if
 an error occurs while appending.  Also, some mail stores may require

Crispin Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 3502 IMAP MULTIAPPEND March 2003

 an expensive "open/lock + sync/unlock/close" operation as part of
 appending; this can be quite expensive if it must be done on a
 per-message basis.
 If the server supports both LITERAL+ and pipelining but not
 MULTIAPPEND, it may be possible to get some of the performance
 advantages of MULTIAPPEND by doing a pipelined "batch" append.
 However, it will not work as well as MULTIAPPEND for the following
 reasons:
      1) Multiple APPEND commands, even as part of a pipelined batch,
      are non-atomic by definition.  There is no way to revert the
      mailbox to the state before the batch append in the event of an
      error.
      2) It may not be feasible for the server to coalesce pipelined
      APPEND operations so as to avoid the "open/lock +
      sync/unlock/close" overhead described above.  In any case, such
      coalescing would be timing dependent and thus potentially
      unreliable.  In particular, with traditional UNIX mailbox files,
      it is assumed that a lock is held only for a single atomic
      operation, and many applications disregard any lock that is
      older than 5 minutes.
      3) If an error occurs, depending upon the nature of the error,
      it is possible for additional messages to be appended after the
      error.  For example, the user wants to append 5 messages, but a
      disk quota error occurs with the third message because of its
      size.  However, the fourth and fifth messages have already been
      sent in the pipeline, so the mailbox ends up with the first,
      second, fourth, and fifth messages of the batch appended.

6.3.11. APPEND Command

 Arguments:  mailbox name
             one or more messages to upload, specified as:
                OPTIONAL flag parenthesized list
                OPTIONAL date/time string
                message literal
 Data:       no specific responses for this command
 Result:     OK - append completed
             NO - append error: can't append to that mailbox, error
                  in flags or date/time or message text,
                  append cancelled
             BAD - command unknown or arguments invalid

Crispin Standards Track [Page 2] RFC 3502 IMAP MULTIAPPEND March 2003

    The APPEND command appends the literal arguments as new messages
    to the end of the specified destination mailbox.  This argument
    SHOULD be in the format of an [RFC-2822] message.  8-bit
    characters are permitted in the message.  A server implementation
    that is unable to preserve 8-bit data properly MUST be able to
    reversibly convert 8-bit APPEND data to 7-bit using a [MIME-IMB]
    content transfer encoding.
          Note: There MAY be exceptions, e.g., draft messages, in
          which required [RFC-2822] header lines are omitted in the
          message literal argument to APPEND.  The full implications
          of doing so MUST be understood and carefully weighed.
    If a flag parenthesized list is specified, the flags SHOULD be set
    in the resulting message; otherwise, the flag list of the
    resulting message is set empty by default.
    If a date-time is specified, the internal date SHOULD be set in
    the resulting message; otherwise, the internal date of the
    resulting message is set to the current date and time by default.
    A zero-length message literal argument is an error, and MUST
    return a NO.  This can be used to cancel the append.
    If the append is unsuccessful for any reason (including being
    cancelled), the mailbox MUST be restored to its state before the
    APPEND attempt; no partial appending is permitted.  The server MAY
    return an error before processing all the message arguments.
    If the destination mailbox does not exist, a server MUST return an
    error, and MUST NOT automatically create the mailbox.  Unless it
    is certain that the destination mailbox can not be created, the
    server MUST send the response code "[TRYCREATE]" as the prefix of
    the text of the tagged NO response.  This gives a hint to the
    client that it can attempt a CREATE command and retry the APPEND
    if the CREATE is successful.
    If the mailbox is currently selected, the normal new message
    actions SHOULD occur.  Specifically, the server SHOULD notify the
    client immediately via an untagged EXISTS response.  If the server
    does not do so, the client MAY issue a NOOP command (or failing
    that, a CHECK command) after one or more APPEND commands.

Crispin Standards Track [Page 3] RFC 3502 IMAP MULTIAPPEND March 2003

 Example: C: A003 APPEND saved-messages (\Seen) {329}
          S: + Ready for literal data
          C: Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 21:52:25 -0800 (PST)
          C: From: Fred Foobar <foobar@Blurdybloop.example.COM>
          C: Subject: afternoon meeting
          C: To: mooch@owatagu.example.net
          C: Message-Id: <B27397-0100000@Blurdybloop.example.COM>
          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:  (\Seen) " 7-Feb-1994 22:43:04 -0800" {295}
          S: + Ready for literal data
          C: Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 22:43:04 -0800 (PST)
          C: From: Joe Mooch <mooch@OWaTaGu.example.net>
          C: Subject: Re: afternoon meeting
          C: To: foobar@blurdybloop.example.com
          C: Message-Id: <a0434793874930@OWaTaGu.example.net>
          C: MIME-Version: 1.0
          C: Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
          C:
          C: 3:30 is fine with me.
          C:
          S: A003 OK APPEND completed
          C: A004 APPEND bogusname (\Flagged) {1023}
          S: A004 NO [TRYCREATE] No such mailbox as bogusname
          C: A005 APPEND test (\Flagged) {99}
          S: + Ready for literal data
          C: Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 22:43:04 -0800 (PST)
          C: From: Fred Foobar <fred@example.com>
          C: Subject: hmm...
          C:  {35403}
          S: A005 NO APPEND failed: Disk quota exceeded
      Note: The APPEND command is not used for message delivery,
      because it does not provide a mechanism to transfer [SMTP]
      envelope information.

Modification to IMAP4rev1 Base Protocol Formal Syntax

 The following syntax specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur
 Form (ABNF) notation as specified in [ABNF].
 append          = "APPEND" SP mailbox 1*append-message
 append-message  = [SP flag-list] [SP date-time] SP literal

Crispin Standards Track [Page 4] RFC 3502 IMAP MULTIAPPEND March 2003

MULTIAPPEND Interaction with UIDPLUS Extension

 Servers which support both MULTIAPPEND and [UIDPLUS] will have the
 "resp-code-apnd" rule modified as follows:
 resp-code-apnd  = "APPENDUID" SP nz-number SP set
 That is, the APPENDUID response code returns as many UIDs as there
 were messages appended in the multiple append.  The UIDs returned
 should be in the order the articles where appended.  The message set
 may not contain extraneous UIDs or the symbol "*".

Security Considerations

 The MULTIAPPEND extension does not raise any security considerations
 that are not present in the base [IMAP] protocol, and these issues
 are discussed in [IMAP].  Nevertheless, it is important to remember
 that IMAP4rev1 protocol transactions, including electronic mail data,
 are sent in the clear over the network unless protection from
 snooping is negotiated, either by the use of STARTTLS, privacy
 protection is negotiated in the AUTHENTICATE command, or some other
 protection mechanism is in effect.

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.
 [MIME-IMB] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein, "MIME (Multipurpose Internet
            Mail Extensions) Part One: Format of Internet Message
            Bodies", RFC 2045, November 1996.
 [RFC-2822] Resnick, P., "Internet Message Format", RFC 2822, April
            2001.

Crispin Standards Track [Page 5] RFC 3502 IMAP MULTIAPPEND March 2003

Informative References

 [LITERAL+] Myers, J., "IMAP4 non-synchronizing literals", RFC 2088,
            January 1997.
 [UIDPLUS]  Myers, J., "IMAP4 UIDPLUS extension", RFC 2359, June 1988.
 [SMTP]     Klensin, J., Editor, "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC
            2821, April 2001.

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

Crispin Standards Track [Page 6] RFC 3502 IMAP MULTIAPPEND March 2003

Full Copyright Statement

 Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003).  All Rights Reserved.
 This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
 and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
 kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
 included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this
 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
 developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
 copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
 followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
 English.
 The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
 This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
 "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
 TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
 BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
 HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
 MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Acknowledgement

 Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
 Internet Society.

Crispin Standards Track [Page 7]

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