The imapclient needs more changes, like more strict parsing, before it can be a
generally usable IMAP client, these are a few steps towards that.
- Fix a bug in the imapserver METADATA responses for TOOMANY and MAXSIZE.
- Split low-level IMAP protocol handling (new Proto type) from the higher-level
client command handling (existing Conn type). The idea is that some simple
uses of IMAP can get by with just using these commands, while more intricate
uses of IMAP (like a synchronizing client that needs to talk to all kinds of
servers with different behaviours and implemented extensions) can write custom
commands and read untagged responses or command completion results
explicitly. The lower-level method names have clearer names now, like
ReadResponse instead of Response.
- Merge the untagged responses and (command completion) "Result" into a new
type Response. Makes function signatures simpler. And make Response implement
the error interface, and change command methods to return the Response as error
if the result is NO or BAD. Simplifies error handling, and still provides the
option to continue after a NO or BAD.
- Add UIDSearch/MSNSearch commands, with a custom "search program", so mostly
to indicate these commands exist.
- More complete coverage of types for response codes, for easier handling.
- Automatically handle any ENABLED or CAPABILITY untagged response or response
code for IMAP command methods on type Conn.
- Make difference between MSN vs UID versions of
FETCH/STORE/SEARCH/COPY/MOVE/REPLACE commands more clear. The original MSN
commands now have MSN prefixed to their name, so they are grouped together in
the documentation.
- Document which capabilities are needed for a command.
Once clients enable this extension, commands can no longer refer to "message
sequence numbers" (MSNs), but can only refer to messages with UIDs. This means
both sides no longer have to carefully keep their sequence numbers in sync
(error-prone), and don't have to keep track of a mapping of sequence numbers to
UIDs (saves resources).
With UIDONLY enabled, all FETCH responses are replaced with UIDFETCH response.
Keeping the message files around, and the message details in the database, is
useful for IMAP sessions that haven't seen/processed the removal of a message
yet and try to fetch it. Before, we would return errors. Similarly, a session
that has a mailbox selected that is removed can (at least in theory) still read
messages.
The mechanics to do this need keeping removed mailboxes around too. JMAP needs
that anyway, so we now keep modseq/createseq/expunged history for mailboxes
too. And while we're at it, for annotations as well.
For future JMAP support, we now also keep the mailbox parent id around for a
mailbox, with an upgrade step to set the field for existing mailboxes and
fixing up potential missing parents (which could possibly have happened in an
obscure corner case that I doubt anyone ran into).
MULTIAPPEND modifies the existing APPEND command to allow multiple messages. it
is somewhat more involved than a regular append of a single message since the
operation (of adding multiple messages) must be atomic. either all are added,
or none are.
we check as early as possible if the messages won't cause an over-quota error.
i added the metadata extension to the imapserver recently. then i wondered how
a client would efficiently find changed metadata. turns out the qresync rfc
mentions that metadata changes should set a new modseq on the mailbox.
shouldn't be hard, except that we were not explicitly keeping track of modseqs
per mailbox. we only kept them for messages, and we were just looking up the
latest message modseq when we needed the modseq (we keep db entries for
expunged messages, so this worked out fine). that approach isn't enough
anymore. so know we keep track of modseq & createseq for mailboxes, just as for
messages. and we also track modseq/createseq for annotations. there's a good
chance jmap is going to need it.
this also adds consistency checks for modseq/createseq on mailboxes and
annotations to the account storage. it helped spot cases i missed where the
values need to be updated.
we already supported special-use flags. settable through the webmail interface,
and new accounts already got standard mailboxes with special-use flags
predefined. but now the IMAP "CREATE" command implements creating mailboxes
with special-use flags.
an é (e with accent) can also be written as e+\u0301. the first form is NFC,
the second NFD. when logging in, we transform usernames (email addresses) to
NFC. so both forms will be accepted. if a client is using NFD, they can log
in too.
for passwords, we apply the PRECIS "opaquestring", which (despite the name)
transforms the value too: unicode spaces are replaced with ascii spaces. the
string is also normalized to NFC. PRECIS may reject confusing passwords when
you set a password.
- prometheus is now behind an interface, they aren't dependencies for the
reusable components anymore.
- some dependencies have been inverted: instead of packages importing a main
package to get configuration, the main package now sets configuration in
these packages. that means fewer internals are pulled in.
- some functions now have new parameters for values that were retrieved from
package "mox-".
it was far down on the roadmap, but implemented earlier, because it's
interesting, and to help prepare for a jmap implementation. for jmap we need to
implement more client-like functionality than with just imap. internal data
structures need to change. jmap has lots of other requirements, so it's already
a big project. by implementing a webmail now, some of the required data
structure changes become clear and can be made now, so the later jmap
implementation can do things similarly to the webmail code. the webmail
frontend and webmail are written together, making their interface/api much
smaller and simpler than jmap.
one of the internal changes is that we now keep track of per-mailbox
total/unread/unseen/deleted message counts and mailbox sizes. keeping this
data consistent after any change to the stored messages (through the code base)
is tricky, so mox now has a consistency check that verifies the counts are
correct, which runs only during tests, each time an internal account reference
is closed. we have a few more internal "changes" that are propagated for the
webmail frontend (that imap doesn't have a way to propagate on a connection),
like changes to the special-use flags on mailboxes, and used keywords in a
mailbox. more changes that will be required have revealed themselves while
implementing the webmail, and will be implemented next.
the webmail user interface is modeled after the mail clients i use or have
used: thunderbird, macos mail, mutt; and webmails i normally only use for
testing: gmail, proton, yahoo, outlook. a somewhat technical user is assumed,
but still the goal is to make this webmail client easy to use for everyone. the
user interface looks like most other mail clients: a list of mailboxes, a
search bar, a message list view, and message details. there is a top/bottom and
a left/right layout for the list/message view, default is automatic based on
screen size. the panes can be resized by the user. buttons for actions are just
text, not icons. clicking a button briefly shows the shortcut for the action in
the bottom right, helping with learning to operate quickly. any text that is
underdotted has a title attribute that causes more information to be displayed,
e.g. what a button does or a field is about. to highlight potential phishing
attempts, any text (anywhere in the webclient) that switches unicode "blocks"
(a rough approximation to (language) scripts) within a word is underlined
orange. multiple messages can be selected with familiar ui interaction:
clicking while holding control and/or shift keys. keyboard navigation works
with arrows/page up/down and home/end keys, and also with a few basic vi-like
keys for list/message navigation. we prefer showing the text instead of
html (with inlined images only) version of a message. html messages are shown
in an iframe served from an endpoint with CSP headers to prevent dangerous
resources (scripts, external images) from being loaded. the html is also
sanitized, with javascript removed. a user can choose to load external
resources (e.g. images for tracking purposes).
the frontend is just (strict) typescript, no external frameworks. all
incoming/outgoing data is typechecked, both the api request parameters and
response types, and the data coming in over SSE. the types and checking code
are generated with sherpats, which uses the api definitions generated by
sherpadoc based on the Go code. so types from the backend are automatically
propagated to the frontend. since there is no framework to automatically
propagate properties and rerender components, changes coming in over the SSE
connection are propagated explicitly with regular function calls. the ui is
separated into "views", each with a "root" dom element that is added to the
visible document. these views have additional functions for getting changes
propagated, often resulting in the view updating its (internal) ui state (dom).
we keep the frontend compilation simple, it's just a few typescript files that
get compiled (combined and types stripped) into a single js file, no additional
runtime code needed or complicated build processes used. the webmail is served
is served from a compressed, cachable html file that includes style and the
javascript, currently just over 225kb uncompressed, under 60kb compressed (not
minified, including comments). we include the generated js files in the
repository, to keep Go's easily buildable self-contained binaries.
authentication is basic http, as with the account and admin pages. most data
comes in over one long-term SSE connection to the backend. api requests signal
which mailbox/search/messages are requested over the SSE connection. fetching
individual messages, and making changes, are done through api calls. the
operations are similar to imap, so some code has been moved from package
imapserver to package store. the future jmap implementation will benefit from
these changes too. more functionality will probably be moved to the store
package in the future.
the quickstart enables webmail on the internal listener by default (for new
installs). users can enable it on the public listener if they want to. mox
localserve enables it too. to enable webmail on existing installs, add settings
like the following to the listeners in mox.conf, similar to AccountHTTP(S):
WebmailHTTP:
Enabled: true
WebmailHTTPS:
Enabled: true
special thanks to liesbeth, gerben, andrii for early user feedback.
there is plenty still to do, see the list at the top of webmail/webmail.ts.
feedback welcome as always.
for conditional storing and quick resynchronisation (not sure if mail clients are actually using it that).
each message now has a "modseq". it is increased for each change. with
condstore, imap clients can request changes since a certain modseq. that
already allows quickly finding changes since a previous connection. condstore
also allows storing (e.g. setting new message flags) only when the modseq of a
message hasn't changed.
qresync should make it fast for clients to get a full list of changed messages
for a mailbox, including removals.
we now also keep basic metadata of messages that have been removed (expunged).
just enough (uid, modseq) to tell client that the messages have been removed.
this does mean we have to be careful when querying messages from the database.
we must now often filter the expunged messages out.
we also keep "createseq", the modseq when a message was created. this will be
useful for the jmap implementation.
