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6.3.2 SELECT Command

Arguments: mailbox name

Responses:

  • REQUIRED untagged responses: FLAGS, EXISTS, LIST
  • REQUIRED OK untagged responses: PERMANENTFLAGS, UIDNEXT, UIDVALIDITY

Result:

  • OK - select completed, now in selected state
  • NO - select failure, now in authenticated state: no such mailbox, can't access mailbox
  • BAD - command unknown or arguments invalid

The SELECT command selects a mailbox so that messages in the mailbox can be accessed. Before returning an OK to the client, the server MUST send the following untagged data to the client. (The order of individual responses is not important.) Note that earlier versions of this protocol, such as the IMAP4rev1 version specified in [RFC2060], only required the FLAGS and EXISTS untagged responses and UIDVALIDITY response code. Client implementations that need to remain compatible with such older IMAP versions have to implement default behavior for missing data, as discussed with the individual items.

FLAGS Defined flags in the mailbox. See the description of the FLAGS response in Section 7.3.5 for more detail.

<n> EXISTS The number of messages in the mailbox. See the description of the EXISTS response in Section 7.4.1 for more detail.

LIST The server MUST return a LIST response with the mailbox name. The list of mailbox attributes MUST be accurate. If the server allows denormalized UTF-8 mailbox names (see Section 5.1) and the supplied mailbox name differs from the normalized version, the server MUST return LIST with the OLDNAME extended data item. See Section 6.3.9.7 for more details.

OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (<list of flags>)] A list of message flags that the client can change permanently. If this is missing, the client should assume that all flags can be changed permanently.

OK [UIDNEXT <n>] The next unique identifier value. Refer to Section 2.3.1.1 for more information.

OK [UIDVALIDITY <n>] The unique identifier validity value. Refer to Section 2.3.1.1 for more information.

Only one mailbox can be selected at a time in a connection; simultaneous access to multiple mailboxes requires multiple connections. The SELECT command automatically deselects any currently selected mailbox before attempting the new selection. Consequently, if a mailbox is selected and a SELECT command that fails is attempted, no mailbox is selected. When deselecting a selected mailbox, the server MUST return an untagged OK response with the "[CLOSED]" response code when the currently selected mailbox is closed (see Section 7.1).

If the client is permitted to modify the mailbox, the server SHOULD prefix the text of the tagged OK response with the "[READ-WRITE]" response code.

If the client is not permitted to modify the mailbox but is permitted read access, the mailbox is selected as read-only, and the server MUST prefix the text of the tagged OK response to SELECT with the "[READ-ONLY]" response code. Read-only access through SELECT differs from the EXAMINE command in that certain read-only mailboxes MAY permit the change of permanent state on a per-user (as opposed to global) basis. Netnews messages marked in a server-based .newsrc file are an example of such per-user permanent state that can be modified with read-only mailboxes.

Example:

C: A142 SELECT INBOX
S: * 172 EXISTS
S: * OK [UIDVALIDITY 3857529045] UIDs valid
S: * OK [UIDNEXT 4392] Predicted next UID
S: * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
S: * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Deleted \Seen \*)] Limited
S: * LIST () "/" INBOX
S: A142 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed

Example:

C: A142 SELECT INBOX
S: * 172 EXISTS
S: * OK [UIDVALIDITY 3857529045] UIDs valid
S: * OK [UIDNEXT 4392] Predicted next UID
S: * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
S: * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Deleted \Seen \*)] Limited
S: A142 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed
[...some time later...]
C: A143 SELECT Drafts
S: * OK [CLOSED] Previous mailbox is now closed
S: * 5 EXISTS
S: * OK [UIDVALIDITY 9877410381] UIDs valid
S: * OK [UIDNEXT 102] Predicted next UID
S: * LIST () "/" Drafts
S: * FLAGS (\Answered \Flagged \Deleted \Seen \Draft)
S: * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Deleted \Seen \Answered \Flagged \Draft \*)] System flags and keywords allowed
S: A143 OK [READ-WRITE] SELECT completed

Note that IMAP4rev1-compliant servers can also send the untagged RECENT response that was deprecated in IMAP4rev2, e.g., "* 0 RECENT". Pure IMAP4rev2 clients are advised to ignore the untagged RECENT response.

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