IMAP server assignment

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I’ve been assigned to write a simple IMAP server using Java. I don’t have any experience with any mail server at all and I dont know where to start at. It’s a “teaching project” and I haven’t been given any info how to do it . Assistant just said that we should google it out, but I even dont know what to look for.

EDIT: From this subject the last thing I’d learned was how to create a socket in Java, using TCP connection. And I dont even know is this something related to that?

In: Technology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on IMAP says: “In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by RFC 3501.”

You need to read RFC 3501. That’s the spec for what your server needs to do.

Anonymous 0 Comments

I’m going to ELI5 the assignment.

You have to build an IMAP server. Okay, great. First thing you need to do is understand what IMAP is. Great news is it is a (very simple) protocol. What that means is that there are expected actions and responses for every interaction. So you learn what they are. And then you go build code that gives the right responses when a client asks a question.

Also, your lecturer should really have explained that to you.