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AfterLogic Forum : MailBee.NET Objects

Topic: Email application overview

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prophead10
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Joined: 06 December 2010
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Posted: 06 December 2010 at 8:49am \| IP Logged

Hello all,

Can anyone point me to a good overview of what an email application using mailbee involves?

I need to integrate email management into a web application (send, receive, manage folders, etc).

I just need some high-level guidance on what the normal practices are. For example:

are mail messages normally downloaded from the server and saved in a local store (ie database)?

are folders other than the inbox created and managed locally?

is the full email normally downloaded when email is checked or only the from, date, subject, etc?

That's the type of high level guidance I need. I believe I can figure out how to implement the functionality but need some guidance on the best architecture to use.

Thanks in advance.

Igor
AfterLogic Support

Joined: 24 June 2008
Location: United States
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Posted: 07 December 2010 at 2:51am \| IP Logged

Well, I believe the first and the most important thing you should realize is that there's no approach which would be perfect for everyone. We actually market an email application which uses MailBee.NET Objects as a ground, it is WebMail Pro ASP.NET. And it offers quite a lot of customization options for the above reason.

For instance, you can choose from POP3 or IMAP protocol to be used for fetching mails. Both of them have their own benefits and disadvantages, IMAP offers much more features though: support for multiple folders, read/unread message status etc.

You'll always have to choose what's more important in each particular case: level of performance achieved or amount of resources used. You can either store message headers in the database and the entire messages will be downloaded when user selects the message; or you can download full messages right after checking for new mails; or combine the approaches - synchronize headers only, but store the message locally when it was downloaded for the first time. Whichever option you prefer, you'll have to keep messages organized according to serverside Unique IDs (UIDs), otherwise it will be hard if not impossible to synchronize your local database with mails on server.

We have a couple of articles in our Knowledge Base, it describes a number of approaches you can take while creating your own email application:

How to download unread e-mails in POP3?

Getting notifications about new messages in mailbox (IMAP IDLE and polling)

Hope this helps!

--
Regards,
Igor, AfterLogic Support

prophead10
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Joined: 06 December 2010
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Posted: 07 December 2010 at 7:46am \| IP Logged

Hi Igor,

Thanks for your reply! It was very helpful, that is the kind of advice I was looking for.

I will use your advice and the articles you recommended as a starting point.

Thanks again!

miklanderson2
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Joined: 31 December 2010
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Posted: 31 December 2010 at 2:55am \| IP Logged

Great response. It helped clear up a few questions I had as well. Between IMAP and POP3, which of the two do you recommend?

Alex
AfterLogic Support

Joined: 19 November 2003
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Posted: 31 December 2010 at 4:46am \| IP Logged

As Igor said above, IMAP is preferred as it provides much more features including read/unread message status and folders.

Regards,
Alex

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