What's the most efficient way to get all emails with a specific type of attachment over IMAP? - email

From what I can tell, IMAP SEARCH doesn't support searching by if an email has attachments (except Gmail's variation, which I'm not interested in...I need a general IMAP solution). Is that correct?
Assuming that's the case, my understanding is that I have to issue a FETCH and filter on the client side.
If this is correct, what's the FETCH that will yield the smallest amount of information that will allow me to filter by attachment type? I believe it's FETCH BODYSTRUCTURE, but I'd like confirmation.
I looked at FETCH BODY[MIME], but it appears that needs a section number (or numbers) and MIME can't be used by itself. I believe that there can be any number of sections and subsections, and theres no way to specify to search all sections. Is that correct?
I'm looking for a protocol level answer. I don't need an answer using any specific language or library.
Thanks!

Generally, to get all attachment, you look for their number and names first in imap_fetchstructure->parts, it's an array of file names.
Then to get file content you need to get imap_fetchbody and add 1 to it.
For example, attachment number one is found on section number 2.
I created my Imap solution and it's working well.
based to that you can add you search section

Related

REST url proper format

my REST API format:
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products - get all products
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/3 - get product with id=3
Also, the products can be orginized into a product groups.
What is a proper way to get all product groups according to REST best practices:
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups
or
http://example.com/api/v1.0/productgroups
...
another option ?
I can't agree with Rishabh Soni because http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups may lead to ambiguity.
I would put my money on http://example.com/api/v1.0/productgroups or even better http://example.com/api/v1.0/product_groups (better readability).
I've had similar discussion here: Updating RESTful resources against aggregate roots only
Question: About the thing of /products/features or /product-features,
is there any consensus on this? Do you know any good source to ensure
that it's not just a matter of taste?
Answer: I think this is misleading. I would expect to get all features
in all products rather than get all possible features. But, to be
honest, it’s hard to find any source talking directly about this
problem, but there is a bunch of articles where people don’t try to
create nested resources like /products/features, but do this
separately.
So, we can't be sure http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups will return all possible groups or just all groups that are connected with all existing products (what about a group that has not been connected with the product yet?).
To avoid this ambiguity, you can add some annotation in documentation. But you can just prepare http://example.com/api/v1.0/product_groups and all is clear.
If you are developing Rest API for your clients than you should not rely on id's. Instead build a meaningful abbreviation and map them to actual id on server side.
If that is not possible, instead of using
http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/3 you can use http://example.com/api/v1.0/products?product_id=3 and then you can provide "product_id" description in the documentation. basically telling the client ways to use product_id.
In short a url must be meaningful and follow a pattern.The variable part must be send by in the url query(part after ? or POST payload)
With this, method to querying the server is also important. If client is trying to get something to the server he should use "GET" http request, similar POST http request if it is uploading new info and "PUT" request if it is updating or creating a new resource.
So by this analogy http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups is more appropriate as it is following a pattern(groups in product) while productgroups is more like a keyword with no pattern.
A directory like pattern is more easier to understand. Like in file systems(C:\Program Files\WinRAR), every part gets us to more generalized target.
You can also customize this for specific group- http://example.com/api/v1.0/products/groups?id=3

Should I allow user-provided values to be passed through a query string?

I'm adding a search endpoint to a RESTful API. After reading this SO answer, I'd like the endpoint to be designed like:
GET /users?firstName=Otis&hobby=golf,rugby,hunting
That seems like a good idea so far. But the values that I'll be using to perform the search will be provided by the user via a standard HTML input field. I'll guard against malicious injections on the server-side, so that's not my concern. I'm more concerned about the user providing a value that causes the URL to exceed the max URL length of ~2000 characters.
I can do some max-length validation and add some user prompts, etc, but I'm wondering if there's a more standard way to handle this case.
I thought about providing the values in the request body using POST /users, but that endpoint is reserved for new user creation, so that's out.
Any thoughts? Thanks.
I see these possible solutions:
not actually a solution. Go with the query parameter and accept the length constraints
go with the POST solution that shouldn't be designed as you mention. As you point out, if you POST a user to .../users you will create a new user entity. But this is not what you want to do. You want to submit a search ticket to the server that will return a list of results matching your criteria. I'll design something as such
POST .../search/users passing in the body a representation of your search item
distribute the query both server side and client side. Say you have complex criteria to match. Set up a taxonomy of them so that the most strict ones are handled server side. Thus, the server is able to return a manageable list of items you can subsequently filter on the client side. In this approach you can save space in the query string by sending to the server only a subset of the criteria you want to meet in your search.

How to create repeating fields in REST with soapUI?

I am trying to create a REST call in soapUI with a field that can be repeated. Does anyone know how to make this work? I can't seem to create a 2nd field with the same name and get an error when trying to add all the values in the single field.
ie, I am trying to send an email to multiple people
Trying to find answer to same question I found this link from soapUI support forum which gives the answer.
There is property "Multi-value delimiter" in Request Properties in soapUI (bottom left corner). You need to specify this delimiter (for example "|") and then you can provide multiple values in soapUI using the delimiter which you specified (example: one|two|three, will send array of three elements: one, two, three).

Multiple tags / folders in Google Reader

I want to be able to grab data from multiple tags / folders in a users Google Reader.
I know how to do one http://www.google.com/reader/atom/user/-/label/SOMELABEL but how would you do two or three or ten?
Doesn't look like you can get multiple tags/folders in one request. If it's feasible you should iterate over the different tags/folders and aggregate them in your application.
[edit]
Since it looks like you have a large list of tags/folders you need to query, an alternative is to get the full list of entries, then sort out the ones the user wants. It looks like each entry has a category element that will tell you what tag is associated with it. This might be feasible in your case.
(Source: http://code.google.com/p/pyrfeed/wiki/GoogleReaderAPI)
(Source: http://www.google.com/reader/atom/user/-/state/com.google/starred)
I think you cannot get aggregated data as you hope to be able to. If you think about it, even Google lets you browse folders or tags one at a time, and do not aggregate a sub-set of them.
You can choose to have a list of all the items (for each one of their available statuses) or a list of a particular tag/folder.
You could do it in 2 requests. First you need to perform a GET request to http://www.google.com/reader/stream/items/ids. It supports several parameters like
s (required parameter; stream id to fetch; may be defined more than one time),
n (required; number of items to fetch)
r for ranking (optional)
and others (see more under /ids section)
And then you should perform a POST request (this is because there could be a lot of ids, and therefore the request could be cut off) to http://www.google.com/reader/api/0/stream/items/contents. The required parameter is i which holds the feed item identifier (could be defined more than once).
This should return data from several feeds (as returned for me).

What is a good strategy for adding additional information in a GET query over REST?

Given that we provide a restful api that serves book entities listening at
/books
And a client can get a book at the usual
GET /books/{id}
Suppose that we want to begin offering discounts on books to only our most vigilant buyers. These buyers would be given a discount code, and that code will reduce the price of the book.
Thus, a generic response may be
GET /books/4
{"id":4, "price":"24.95"}
Where a response to a query with a discount code may be
GET /books/4
{"id":4, "price":"24.95", "yourPrice":"19.95"}
The back-end processing we can get figured out, but what is the best practice for a client submitting a discount code over a restful api?
Certain books will be eligible for discounts while others will not. Discounts will not be broad (20% off everything), but instead will map to a specific price for that particular code (or client/code combo).
We've considered:
kludging the url
GET /codes/{someCode}/books/{id}
Adding the code in a header value
Using a query string
GET /books?code=myCode
anything else?
EDIT: Our goal is not to implement single-use codes. Instead, these discount codes could be used some fixed number of times for some fixed set of books.
I like using query variables. I just looked at the RESTful Web Services book, my main reference in this area, and they say:
Use query variables only to suggest
arguments being plugged into an
algorithm... If two URIs differ only
in their query variables, it implies
they're the different sets of inputs
into the same underlying algorithm.
It seems to me your discount codes are inputs to a discounting algorithm.
Charles
If you're going to be submitting anything that's not idempotent, I would suggest using POST instead of GET. You wouldn't want a client to be able to use their code more than once.
Anything you add in the URL or header values are open to be intercepted, and possibly allowing other users to 'fake' their discount ID. 1 approach would be to introduce a new POST call, that will allow the ID to be encrypted with simple HTTPS. The POSTed data could be as simple as the discountID or customerID.
Added - Sorry Michael, you already said that :)
You can register the code in a table so when the user retrieves that book automatically returns that book with the proper discount, for example:
The user can add some code
POST /register/{code}
This will add an entry to a table {user} - {code} so when the user retrieves by
GET /books/{id}
will use that entry to apply the discount. I'm guessing that you already have some relation between {code}-{book} so wont get into that.