Re: IMAP SEARCH

Hey Benoit,

thanks for the fast response.
I tried your fix and everything seems to work now. James doesn't emit the flags following a search and Roundcube can parse the response, even if the result is empty.
I do not understand IMAP well enough to understand your exact code changes but I've seen that there are already two approvals.

Thanks!
Felix

Am 14.08.26 um 07:09 schrieb Benoit TELLIER:
> Hello Felix,
> 
> Thanks for the report.
> 
> I opened https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/JAMES-4218 in order to track this.
> 
> While James is RFC-wise in its right,
> My feeling is that we miss manages unsollicited notifications here.
> APPEND should likely trigger flag related unsollicited notificationsSELECT should reset state of applicable flags not to double emmit themI did put together a fix regarding this: https://github.com/apache/james-project/pull/3109
> Would this solve your issue? Can you give it a try?--
> 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Benoit TELLIER
> 
> General manager of Linagora VIETNAM.
> Product owner for Twake-Mail product.
> Chairman of the Apache James project.
> 
> Mail: [email protected]
> Tel: (0033) 6 77 26 04 58 (WhatsApp, Signal)
> 
> 
> 
> On Aug 13, 2026 11:19 PM, from Felix Auringer <[email protected]>Hey,
> 
> I am currently testing the performance of IMAP search with the postgres distribution of James to see whether it is sufficient for our relatively small use case.
> The following are two excerpts of the communication between our webmail client Roundcube and the James IMAP service:
> 
> C: A0005 UID SEARCH RETURN (ALL) HEADER SUBJECT "Something completely unknown"
> S: * ESEARCH (TAG "A0005") UID
> S: * FLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded NonJunk)
> S: * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded NonJunk \*)] Limited
> S: A0005 OK SEARCH completed.
> 
> C: A0005 UID SEARCH RETURN (ALL) HEADER SUBJECT DAB
> S: * ESEARCH (TAG "A0005") UID ALL 285
> S: * FLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded NonJunk)
> S: * OK [PERMANENTFLAGS (\Answered \Deleted \Draft \Flagged \Seen $Forwarded NonJunk \*)] Limited
> S: A0005 OK SEARCH completed.
> 
> I am a little bit surprised by the reply lines starting with `* FLAGS` and `* OK`.
> According to the ABNF in the IMAP RFC (datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3501#section-9), they are valid versions of `response-data`.
> However, I do not see any documentation for it in the SEARCH response description (datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3501#section-7.2.5) or the UID command description (datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3501#section-6.4.8).
> I also don't see anything in the RFC regarding ESEARCH (datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4731).
> 
> Roundcube chokes on the line starting with `* FLAGS` if there is no result (second communication) because it tries to parse the flags as message UIDs and fails.
> Roundcube should probably stop parsing at the end of the line. However, I do not understand why James returns all the flags and I am unsure whether this is standard-compliant behavior.
> Does somebody know the meaning of those response lines or encountered a similar problem?
> 
> As contrast, here are the same requests against a Dovecot IMAP server:
> 
> C: c UID SEARCH RETURN (ALL) HEADER SUBJECT "Something completely unknown"
> S: * ESEARCH (TAG "c") UID
> S: c OK Search completed (0.026 + 0.000 secs).
> 
> C: a UID SEARCH RETURN (ALL) HEADER SUBJECT DAB
> S: * ESEARCH (TAG "a") UID ALL 7774
> S: a OK Search completed (0.006 + 0.000 secs).
> 
> Both of them are parsed correctly by Roundcube.
> 
> Best regards,
> Felix
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Gesellschaft für interkulturelles
Zusammenleben gGmbH (GIZ)
Felix Auringer
IT
Reformationsplatz 2
13597 Berlin

Tel: 030/513 0100 00; Fax: 030/513 0100 09 
www.giz.berlin; [email protected]

Amtsgericht Charlottenburg HRB 200872 B
Geschäftsführerin: Dr. Britta Marschke