Lua

Get IMAP Mailbox Status

Demonstrates the Chilkat Imap.GetMailboxStatus method, which sends the IMAP STATUS command for a mailbox and returns the reported values as XML attributes — including messages (total count), recent, uidnext, uidvalidity, and unseen. This example gets the Inbox status.

Tip: XML parsing code for this result can be generated at Chilkat Tools.

Background: STATUS queries a mailbox's summary counts without selecting it — ideal for showing unread counts across many folders in a UI, or checking whether a folder has new mail before deciding to open it. Two values are especially useful for sync: uidvalidity (if it changes, previously stored UIDs are no longer valid) and uidnext (the UID the next new message will get, so anything at or above a remembered value is new).

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Lua

local chilkat = require("chilkat")

-- Demonstrates the Imap.GetMailboxStatus method, which sends the IMAP STATUS command for a
-- mailbox and returns the reported values as XML attributes (such as messages, recent,
-- uidnext, uidvalidity, and unseen).

local imap = chilkat.Imap.new()

imap.ssl = true
imap.port = 993

local success = imap:connect("imap.example.com")
if not success then
    print(imap.last_error_text)
    return
end

success = imap:login("user@example.com", "myPassword")
if not success then
    print(imap.last_error_text)
    return
end

-- Get the status of a mailbox (without selecting it).
local statusXml = imap:get_mailbox_status("Inbox")
if not imap.last_method_success then
    print(imap.last_error_text)
    return
end

print(statusXml)

-- XML parsing code for this result can be generated at Chilkat's online tool:
-- https://tools.chilkat.io/xmlParse

success = imap:disconnect()
if not success then
    print(imap.last_error_text)
    return
end