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. ACAP allows most work to be done from two important commands: SEARCH and STORE. The SEARCH command allows a client to find existing information held on an ACAP server, and the STORE command allows a client to write new information to the server. These two commands have a number of optional modifiers that direct behavior and responses that return information based on the modifiers used.

Other commands available in this state support the SEARCH command (FREECONTEXT, UPDATECONTEXT, DELETEDSINCE) and allow the user to determine and potentially modify access restrictions (SETACL, DELETEACL, MYRIGHTS, LISTRIGHTS, GETQUOTA).

ACAP’s monster command is SEARCH Since the protocol is optimized for reading and it is expected that information will be read more often than written, most of ACAP’s magic is encapsulated in this command.

The SEARCH command allows a user to perform searches across datasets. The searches may be very simple or very complex. Comparison operators (described later in this section) may be used to return very specific subsets of information from a server. search results may even be saved by use of a “context”. A context is a set of entries that were returned from a search. Contexts may be further searched by subsequent commands. So what, you say? With ACAP, changes to the information that makes up a context can ...