The maildir provider allows for both reading and saving of MIME messages to and
from a local filesystem, using the Maildir format developed by Dan
Bernstein and used in qmail, courier-imap, and other mail processing systems.

Reading messages

Nothing special should be required for the configuration of a connection to
a local mailbox using the provider. The protocol to use is maildir. This
will locate the default ("Maildir") directory:

  URLName url = new URLName("maildir:///home/user");
  Store store = session.getStore(url);
  Folder root = store.getDefaultFolder();
  Folder inbox = root.getFolder("INBOX");

An alternate mailbox can be read. Specify the parent directory, then look up
the mailbox directory by name.

  URLName url = new URLName("maildir:///home/user/mail");
  Store store = session.getStore(url);
  Folder root = store.getDefaultFolder();
  Folder savedMessages = root.getFolder("MySavedMessages");

Any host details specified in the connection (username, password, host, or
port) are ignored. The file part of the URL is used to specify the default 
root directory for mailboxes. If no directory is specified in the URL, the
user's home directory becomes the de facto default directory context for
lookups.

Saving messages

You may use the standard appendMessages() method to save MIME messages to a
local mailbox using this provider.

Filtering

No inherent filtering mechanism is currently supplied, although you are free
to use procmail or any other filtering MTA as you see fit.

Session properties

There is a session property you can set to the value of your MAILDIR
environment variable:

  property --------------------+ type ---+ default + description ----------
  mail.maildir.maildir         | String  | none    | ${MAILDIR}

This allows the provider to locate the correct directory for INBOX.


Chris Burdess, April 2003