Question

I am creating a small email client that logs into Gmail via the Imap protocol and searches for a specific email sender the downloads the contents of that particular message.

I am using C++ and libcurl.

I have managed to login, and the response returned after the headers is the first email in my inbox.

I would like to know how to send requests/commands via the Imap protocol that can be configured to work with Libcurl. A brief reading of the RFC spec suggests the form of

<COMMAND> <argument>

and whilst this might work on the command line with telnet or curl, it is not compatible with C/C++.

I am logging in via a URL string (char * to be exact) of the form

"imaps://" <username> ":" <password> "@imap.gmail.com:993"

and passing this as the url for curl to initiate, but I am having trouble forming any other request of the same form.

What is the correct way to send commands to gmail/imap using Libcurl?

Thanks in advance

Any help is much appreciated…

Answer 1

I’d say a rough syntax description would look similar to

imap://[<username>:<password>@]<hostname>[:portnum]/[mailboxname]