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