From: Payton Swick <payton@...>
Date: 2006-01-06T04:51:04+09:00
Subject: net/imap idle

Perhaps there's another way to do this without polling, but I added the 
IMAP IDLE (and associated DONE) command to Shugo Maeda's excellent 
net/imap API.

For those unaware, RFC 2177 adds the IDLE command to the IMAP 
specification which allows the server to notify clients when a mailbox 
has changed state (particularly when new mail has arrived).

When issued, an IDLE command requires a DONE to complete it, which 
should be issued at least every 29 minutes, to prevent a timeout.

Anyway, here's the (tiny) piece of code I wrote to implement this; I 
hope it's useful.  Feel free to tell me what I did wrong.

class Net::IMAP
   def idle
     cmd = "IDLE"
     synchronize do
       tag = generate_tag
       put_string(tag + " " + cmd)
       put_string(CRLF)
     end
   end
   def done
     cmd = "DONE"
     synchronize do
       put_string(cmd)
       put_string(CRLF)
     end
   end
end

-Payton