More efficient way to get unseen IMAP messages

captkirk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm trying to write a fairly simple IMAP "polling" utility. The script iterates through the specified IMAP mail folders and displays the number of unread messages over the total number of messages. I'm using Net::IMAP::Simple::SSL since SSL access is imperative in my environment. Here's the snippet I use to get the number of "new" messages:

        for (my $i = 1; $i <= $tmessages; $i++) {
                if (!$imap->seen($i)) {
                        $nmessages++;
                }
        }
[download]

$tmessages, as you can probably guess, is the total number of messages. This works really well with small folders, even foldes with a few hundred messages, but once you hit the thousands it begins to take a fair amount of time. I looked at Mail::IMAPClient, and the 'unseen_count' method looks like it could be useful. However, IMAPClient doesn't appear to have any SSL support "out of the box." I have to admit, my knowledge is severely lacking when it comes to SSL communication in Perl. I tried this snippet, and it complained extensively:

use IO::Socket::SSL;
use Mail::IMAPClient;

$socket = new IO::Socket::SSL("my.mailserver:imaps");

$imap = Mail::IMAPClient->new(Socket   => $socket,
                              User     => $user,
                              Password => $pass,)

or die "Couldn't connect to IMAP server $host as $user: $@\n";

if (!$imap->login) {
        die "Couldn't authenticate: $@\n";
}
[download]

If someone could point me at a more efficient way of getting the unread messages count, or working with IMAP SSL in Mail::IMAPClient, it'd be immensely appreciated! Thanks!

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Re: More efficient way to get unseen IMAP messages by mda2 (Hermit) on May 01, 2006 at 02:49 UTC
The more eficient is use of STATUS command of imap protocol. But it´s not available on Net::IMAP::Simple... Can you implement a hack todo it. 1. Examing the protocol: Read more... (444 Bytes) 2. Understanding module struture (and how Net::IMAP implements): Read more... (427 Bytes) 3. Suggested hack: Read more... (593 Bytes) 4. Resume: Examine the module options on code and protocol to improve your process ;) on time Mail::IMAPClient suggest from davidrw implements many others functions... -- Marco Antonio Rio-PM	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: More efficient way to get unseen IMAP messages by davidrw (Prior) on May 01, 2006 at 02:11 UTC
where does `$tmessages` come from? You can just use Mail::IMAPClient's `unseen` method: `my @unread = $imap->unseen or warn "Could not find unseen msgs: $@\n";` [download] Also from the docs: `foreach my $f ($imap->folders) { print "The $f folder has ", $imap->unseen_count($f)\|\|0, " unseen messages.\n"; }` [download] I don't know if these are more efficient runtime-wise, but certainly make the code cleaner..	[reply] [d/l] [select]