570355 - IMAP: Use INTERNALDATE server attribute (instead of Received: message header) for "Received" date

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(MailNews Core :: Networking: IMAP, enhancement)

Description

[st63z]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100401 Firefox/3.6.3 GTB7.1 (.NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30618)
Build Identifier: 

[The following is derived from Bug 166254 Comment #11 - #17, as well as the newer Bug 402594 Comment #28 - #31.  The former mainly dealt with the concept of "Received date" and adding the message list Received column, while the latter has to do with the Received column on IMAP accounts incorrectly duplicating the Date column.]


To populate the Received column on IMAP accounts, can Thunderbird use the IMAP server's INTERNALDATE message attribute (instead of parsing the message's Received: header)?

Most other clients take the "Received date" value from the server's INTERNALDATE attribute (for IMAP), or from the client's date of download (for POP).  But Thunderbird takes the "Received date" value from the message's Received: header (for both IMAP and POP), in much the same way that the "Sent date" value is traditionally taken from the message's Date: header.

TB's IMAP behavior is the one I'm questioning, since querying the INTERNALDATE attribute should be more reliable and less expensive?


Note that there's an old MozillaZine KB from Jan 2008 describing this IMAP quirk, and it still applies to TB3:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Invalid_date_in_IMAP_messages

Surprisingly, a Bugzilla search for "INTERNALDATE" only turned up a couple of non-relevant IMAP bugs:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?query_format=specific&order=relevance+desc&bug_status=__all__&product=&content=internaldate

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[st63z]

David :Bienvenu had requested to have this assigned to him (see Bug 402594 Comment #30 ).  Can someone help to do that?

Comment 2

[st63z]

As a side note, "Received" date for POP3 is outside the scope of this IMAP bug report, but I imagine that some Thunderbird users may want the option to use the "POP3 client download" date as an alternative to the existing "server received" date taken from Received: header?

Comment 3

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #2)

Conceptually, timestamp in last(top) Received: header is same as INTERNALDATE of IMAP mail. What shown at Received column shouldn't be different kind of data between POP3 and IMAP. Timestamp of download by Tb shouldn't be used in POP3 case, as it's Received column which shows timestamp of Received: header.
Please request different enhancement for different thing.
E.g.
Indicate no timestamp/malformed timestap. Use appropriate timestamp or timestamp requested by user for next in sorting by timestamp related column.
  No Date: header, Malformed Date: header,
  No Received: header(crafted mail, mail moved from Drafts/Outbox),
  Malformed timestamp in last Received: header
Add "mail header download time" column(TOP if POP, fetch header.fields if IMAP)" and "mail data download time" column(RETR if POP3, fetch body if IMAP).

Comment 4

[st63z]

(In reply to comment #3)

Thanks WADA.  Fair point that "Received date" should not have different definitions between POP and IMAP.


P.S.  Here's an external forum thread summarizing this bug report as well as Bug 402594:

http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=59640

Comment 5

[michael]

Just as a warning: Internaldate can be inaccurate if some mailserver messes things up, just received an email from 8 hours in the future ...

Comment 7

[Max Emig [:maxe]]

Does anyone still care about this one, given that my fix for bug 1905210 finally makes use of the existing Received parsing logic for IMAP?

Considering the state of IMAP-code, old and new implementation and the comment by Michael I consider this inferior nowadays.

Comment 8

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

Agreed I think we don't really have a need for this after bug 1905210.