IMAP test

IMAP testing with telnet

This shows how to do basic sanity test of an IMAP server. See also POP3_test and SMTP_test.

The numbers that precede each IMAP command may be any unique string. It should be unique per connection, so using incrementing integers seems as good as anything.

MESSAGES may be one of MESSAGES, UNSEEN, RECENT UIDNEXT UIDVALIDITY

telnet imap.example.com 143
1 LOGIN username password
2 LIST "" *
3 SELECT Inbox
4 STATUS Inbox (MESSAGES)
5 CLOSE
6 LOGOUT

All IMAP headers in message #1

 5 FETCH 1 ALL

headers and body in message #1

 6 FETCH 1 FULL

body only in message #1

 7 FETCH 1 BODY

envelope only in message #1

 8 FETCH 1 ENVELOPE

Get full email in all(*) messages

 9 FETCH * FULL

Get full message #1

 10 UID fetch 1:1 (UID RFC822.SIZE FLAGS BODY.PEEK[])