VB.NET

List and Inspect IMAP Mailboxes

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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Dim success As Boolean = False

'  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.

Dim imap As New Chilkat.Imap

imap.Ssl = True
imap.Port = 993

success = imap.Connect("imap.example.com")
If (success = False) Then
    Debug.WriteLine(imap.LastErrorText)
    Exit Sub
End If

success = imap.Login("user@example.com","myPassword")
If (success = False) Then
    Debug.WriteLine(imap.LastErrorText)
    Exit Sub
End If


'  Populate a Mailboxes object with the full list of mailboxes.  The first argument requests
'  all mailboxes (not subscribed-only) and "*" matches any name.
Dim subscribedOnly As Boolean = False
Dim mailboxes As New Chilkat.Mailboxes
success = imap.MbxList(subscribedOnly,"","*",mailboxes)
If (success = False) Then
    Debug.WriteLine(imap.LastErrorText)
    Exit Sub
End If


'  Loop over each mailbox in the returned collection.
Dim n As Integer = mailboxes.Count
Debug.WriteLine("Number of mailboxes: " & n)

Dim i As Integer
For i = 0 To n - 1
    Dim name As String = mailboxes.GetName(i)
    Debug.WriteLine("Mailbox: " & name)

    '  Whether the mailbox can be selected or examined for message access.
    If (mailboxes.IsSelectable(i)) Then
        Debug.WriteLine("  Selectable: yes")
    Else
        Debug.WriteLine("  Selectable: no")
    End If


    '  Whether the server marked the mailbox as possibly having new messages.
    If (mailboxes.IsMarked(i)) Then
        Debug.WriteLine("  Marked: yes")
    End If


    '  Whether the mailbox has, or may contain, child mailboxes.
    If (mailboxes.HasInferiors(i)) Then
        Debug.WriteLine("  May have child mailboxes")
    End If


    '  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.HasFlag(i,"\HasChildren")) Then
        Debug.WriteLine("  Has child mailboxes")
    End If


    '  Get all of the mailbox's flags as a comma-separated string.
    Dim flags As String = mailboxes.GetFlags(i)
    Debug.WriteLine("  Flags: " & flags)

    '  Iterate the flags individually.
    Dim numFlags As Integer = mailboxes.GetNumFlags(i)
    Dim j As Integer
    For j = 0 To numFlags - 1
        Dim flag As String = mailboxes.GetNthFlag(i,j)
        Debug.WriteLine("    Flag " & j & ": " & flag)
    Next
Next

'  Look up a mailbox by name.  Returns -1 if no mailbox with that name is present.
Dim sentIndex As Integer = mailboxes.GetMailboxIndex("Sent")
If (sentIndex >= 0) Then
    Debug.WriteLine("The Sent mailbox is at index " & sentIndex)
End If


success = imap.Disconnect()
If (success = False) Then
    Debug.WriteLine(imap.LastErrorText)
    Exit Sub
End If