Programming Internet Email

The Authenticated State

A client enters the Authenticated State upon successful login. It is from this state that the client is actually able to do something useful.

Once in this state, a client may create, rename, or delete mailboxes, change the mail accounts or newsgroups to which the client is subscribed, and examine the contents of mailboxes. From here, the client may also select a given mailbox in order to manipulate the contents of a mailbox, and that puts the user into the Selected State, covered next.

Before looking at the commands for this state, we should discuss mailboxes and how they are held on an IMAP server. Each IMAP mailbox holds messages, and each message may be marked with flags that show its state on the server. Table 11-5 lists these flags. Since several of this state’s commands make use of system flags, they bear discussion before the commands themselves.

Table 11-5. IMAP4rev1 System Flags

Flag	Description
\Seen	Message has been read.
\Answered	Message has been answered.
\Flagged	Message is flagged for urgent/special attention.
\Deleted	Message is marked for deletion but will not be actually deleted until an EXPUNGE.
\Draft	Message has not completed composition.
\Recent	The current session is the first session to have been presented with this message.

Anyone who has used a modern MUA has probably seen information held in these flags. Many MUAs display a message list for each mailbox, which indicates the state of each message. A given message may be marked as being “new” or “read”. ...