JMAP support instead of IMAP added to Cypht webmail

Jason Munro

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Jan 24, 2019, 7:41:16 PM1/24/19

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Hi all!

My Open Source webmail project, Cypht, is already listed under "requested" at https://jmap.io/software.html

Happy to say initial JMAP support is now available in the master branch and will be in the next release. Our

support is still limited to using JMAP as an IMAP replacement, and while I have not built anything to deal with

state changes and a few other JMAP specific things, that is on my list along with SMTP and everything else that

JMAP provides, time permitting of course :)

My implementation is written in PHP, and while it's still very "IMAPy" and not really intended as a stand alone

library, here is the code in case anyone finds it useful:

https://github.com/jasonmunro/cypht/blob/master/modules/imap/hm-jmap.php

If anyone on this list can bump Cypht from the "Requested" section to the "Client" section I think that would now

be appropriate.

Thanks!

Neil Jenkins

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Jan 25, 2019, 12:06:41 AM1/25/19

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On Fri, 25 Jan 2019, at 11:41, Jason Munro wrote:

If anyone on this list can bump Cypht from the "Requested" section to the "Client" section I think that would now
be appropriate.

Done! Great work.

Cheers,

Neil.

Jason Munro

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Jan 25, 2019, 12:37:21 AM1/25/19

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Thanks Neil!

If anyone is interested I'm reporting JMAP development progress as I go on this

issue: https://github.com/jasonmunro/cypht/issues/180. Soon I will create more

specific tasks for the remaining work to be done, but until then this is the best

way to keep up with progress.

I also wrote a blog post about what it was like implementing JMAP:

https://unencumberedbyfacts.com/2019/01/24/jmap-its-like-imap-but-not-really/

If you can stand my attempts at humor, there is some realistic feedback about

what it was like adding JMAP support from a client writer point of view.

Thanks again!

Jason

Bron Gondwana

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Jan 25, 2019, 12:41:50 AM1/25/19

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You're welcome. Thanks for the blog post. It's great to see implementation experience from people who haven't been working with this stuff for years!

I'll be taking about JMAP at fosdem next weekend, and I'll definitely mention how easily you were able to convert from IMAP to JMAP in your client.

Cheers,

Bron.

Jason Munro

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Jan 25, 2019, 1:23:39 AM1/25/19

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On Thursday, January 24, 2019 at 11:41:50 PM UTC-6, Bron Gondwana wrote:

You're welcome. Thanks for the blog post. It's great to see implementation experience from people who haven't been working with this stuff for years!

I'll be taking about JMAP at fosdem next weekend, and I'll definitely mention how easily you were able to convert from IMAP to JMAP in your client.

Thanks for considering my feedback!

My estimate is 40 hours of work to build an IMAP compatible JMAP interface

(for my client software). Another 3 hours to build the UI management to

add/delete JMAP servers and split them out from IMAP sources. Cypht already

separates data sources from authentication, so adding a new source is a lot

easier than it might be with a traditional webmail client.

Our IMAP library is 3036 lines of code, the JMAP compatible version is 861 lines

(both counted as NCLOC) which is pretty impressive considering I'm not yet

leveraging the real strengths of JMAP yet.

I have been working on webmail development for a LONG time, and I have to say,

supporting JMAP was not just a lot easier than I thought it would be, It is genuinely