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Lua

List and Inspect IMAP Mailboxes

See more IMAP Examples

Demonstrates the Chilkat Mailboxes class, a read-only result collection populated by Imap.MbxList. This example connects to an IMAP server, lists all mailboxes into a Mailboxes object, then loops from 0 to Count - 1 and inspects each mailbox: its name (GetName), whether it is selectable (IsSelectable) or marked (IsMarked), whether it may have child mailboxes (HasInferiors), a specific flag (HasFlag), and all of its flags both as a string (GetFlags) and individually (GetNumFlags with GetNthFlag). Finally it looks up a mailbox by name with GetMailboxIndex.

Background: Mailboxes is how an application renders an IMAP folder tree. Because it is read-only, you never construct it directly — you receive it from MbxList and read its entries by index. Mailbox names come back as normal Unicode text (Chilkat handles the modified UTF-7 / IMAP UTF-8 encoding at the protocol level), so a name from GetName can be passed straight to methods like SelectMailbox. Note that HasInferiors is often true: it means children exist or may be created, which is not the same as \HasChildren.

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Lua
local chilkat = require("chilkat")

-- Demonstrates using Chilkat.Imap to populate a Mailboxes object (via MbxList), then looping
-- over the collection to inspect each mailbox's name and attributes.  Mailboxes is a read-only
-- result collection -- applications inspect the entries but do not add, remove, or modify them.

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

-- Populate a Mailboxes object with the full list of mailboxes.  The first argument requests
-- all mailboxes (not subscribed-only) and "*" matches any name.
local subscribedOnly = false
local mailboxes = chilkat.Mailboxes.new()
success = imap:mbx_list(subscribedOnly, "", "*", mailboxes)
if not success then
    print(imap.last_error_text)
    return
end

-- Loop over each mailbox in the returned collection.
local n = mailboxes.count
print("Number of mailboxes: " .. n)

for i = 0, n - 1 do
    local name = mailboxes:get_name(i)
    print("Mailbox: " .. name)

    -- Whether the mailbox can be selected or examined for message access.
    if mailboxes:is_selectable(i) then
        print("  Selectable: yes")
    else
        print("  Selectable: no")
    end

    -- Whether the server marked the mailbox as possibly having new messages.
    if mailboxes:is_marked(i) then
        print("  Marked: yes")
    end

    -- Whether the mailbox has, or may contain, child mailboxes.
    if mailboxes:has_inferiors(i) then
        print("  May have child mailboxes")
    end

    -- Check for a specific flag by name.  Include the leading backslash for a system flag;
    -- in CkScript a literal backslash in a string is written as "\\".
    if mailboxes:has_flag(i, "\\HasChildren") then
        print("  Has child mailboxes")
    end

    -- Get all of the mailbox's flags as a comma-separated string.
    local flags = mailboxes:get_flags(i)
    print("  Flags: " .. flags)

    -- Iterate the flags individually.
    local numFlags = mailboxes:get_num_flags(i)
    for j = 0, numFlags - 1 do
        local flag = mailboxes:get_nth_flag(i, j)
        print("    Flag " .. j .. ": " .. flag)
    end
end

-- Look up a mailbox by name.  Returns -1 if no mailbox with that name is present.
local sentIndex = mailboxes:get_mailbox_index("Sent")
if sentIndex >= 0 then
    print("The Sent mailbox is at index " .. sentIndex)
end

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