Auto configure

[david....@gmail.com]

Hi guys;
I’m not sure if I have posted this in the right place, so please re-point me if necessary.
A general question about the Thunderbird auto configure system, just been reading this page;
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Thunderbird/Autoconfiguration

If I’m writing an email application, that’s nothing to do with Thunderbird, am I allowed to piggy back onto the Thunderbird auto configure system to help users find their configuration?
This would involve hitting the following URL and appending the domain name of the users email address like so; https://live.mozillamessaging.com/autoconfig/v1.1/ + “gmail.com” etc
I can then parse the XML to read the settings. I’m sure not sure if the public have permission to do this for their own purposes outside of Thunderbird usage.

If anyone is wondering it’s actually for a free program that patches email support in some old Windows games. Some of you may have played the Age of Wonders series? Well these have a play by email mode, but the email functionality in the games only supports plain authentication without passwords or encryption. So my program acts like a relay, spoofing an old style SMTP server on the local loopback to receive the game email whereupon it sends it out properly through a modern server. It’s called the Age of Wonders Email Wrapper.

Thanks and kind regards
Dave

[Blake Winton]

On 30-01-13 6:27 , david....@gmail.com wrote:
> Hi guys; I’m not sure if I have posted this in the right place, so
> please re-point me if necessary. A general question about the
> Thunderbird auto configure system, just been reading this page;
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Thunderbird/Autoconfiguration
>
> If I’m writing an email application, that’s nothing to do with
> Thunderbird, am I allowed to piggy back onto the Thunderbird auto
> configure system to help users find their configuration?

Yes, please do! I know of several other email clients which piggyback
onto the Thunderbird database (known as "ISPDB") already. :)

> This would
> involve hitting the following URL and appending the domain name of
> the users email address like so;
> https://live.mozillamessaging.com/autoconfig/v1.1/ + “gmail.com” etc

We strongly suggest you follow as many of the steps in
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Thunderbird/Autoconfiguration#Mechanisms
as you can. In particular, you should really ask the server itself for
the config _before_ asking the ISPDB, since they'll have a more offical,
and more up-to-date configuration.

> I can then parse the XML to read the settings. I’m sure not sure if
> the public have permission to do this for their own purposes outside
> of Thunderbird usage.

They certainly do, although if you're going to be using a lot of
bandwidth, I'ld ask you to cache a copy yourself. ;)

> If anyone is wondering it’s actually for a free program that patches
> email support in some old Windows games. Some of you may have played
> the Age of Wonders series? Well these have a play by email mode, but
> the email functionality in the games only supports plain
> authentication without passwords or encryption. So my program acts
> like a relay, spoofing an old style SMTP server on the local loopback
> to receive the game email whereupon it sends it out properly through
> a modern server. It’s called the Age of Wonders Email Wrapper.

Heh, cool!

Thanks,
Blake.

[david....@gmail.com]

Thanks for the pointers. The only other thing I was wondering about is how to know what the latest autoconfig URL is. So a couple of questions;

Is https://autoconfig-live.mozillamessaging.com/autoconfig/ always the latest?
Or do I need to check
https://autoconfig-live.mozillamessaging.com/autoconfig/v1.1, v1.2, v1.3 etc
and try and find the highest version number before I request the config XML?

Ooo yes. I couldn’t find any examples of domains that have a http://autoconfig.domain.com/ - can you point me at one or two?

Cheers!
Dave

[Blake Winton]

On 14-02-13 9:39 , david....@gmail.com wrote:
> Thanks for the pointers. The only other thing I was wondering about
> is how to know what the latest autoconfig URL is. So a couple of
> questions;
>
> Is https://autoconfig-live.mozillamessaging.com/autoconfig/ always
> the latest?

No.

> Or do I need to check
> https://autoconfig-live.mozillamessaging.com/autoconfig/v1.1, v1.2,
> v1.3 etc and try and find the highest version number before I request
> the config XML?

You should figure out which version of the protocol you want to support,
and use that. ;)

(All the data gets back-ported from the latest to every earlier version.
I strongly recommend using the v1.1 protocol, since it's reasonably
forward-compatible, and has had most of the more annoying bugs worked
out. Also, it's the one that's documented. :)

> Ooo yes. I couldn�t find any examples of domains that have a

> http://autoconfig.domain.com/ - can you point me at one or two?

http://www.umich.edu/.well-known/autoconfig/mail/config-v1.1.xml
is the only one I have any record of. Obviously, if someone implements
that on their own, we won't know about it. ;)

Later,
Blake.

[david....@gmail.com]

Thanks a lot Blake, very much appreciated :)