RFC 9007 | JMAP MDN Handling | March 2021 |
Ouazana | Standards Track | [Page] |
This document specifies a data model for handling Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) (see RFC 8098) in the JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP) (see RFCs 8620 and 8621).¶
This is an Internet Standards Track document.¶
This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF community. It has received public review and has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Further information on Internet Standards is available in Section 2 of RFC 7841.¶
Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9007.¶
Copyright (c) 2021 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved.¶
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.¶
JMAP ("The JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP)" [RFC8620]) is a generic protocol for synchronising data, such as mail, calendars, or contacts, between a client and a server. It is optimised for mobile and web environments, and it provides a consistent interface to different data types.¶
JMAP for Mail ("The JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP) for Mail" [RFC8621]) specifies a data model for synchronising email data with a server using JMAP. Clients can use this to efficiently search, access, organise, and send messages.¶
Message Disposition Notifications (MDNs) are defined in [RFC8098] and are used as "read receipts", "acknowledgements", or "receipt notifications".¶
A client can come across MDNs in different ways:¶
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all capitals, as shown here.¶
Type signatures, examples, and property descriptions in this document follow the conventions established in Section 1.1 of [RFC8620]. Data types defined in the core specification are also used in this document.¶
Servers MUST support all properties specified for the new data types defined in this document.¶
The same terminology is used in this document as in the core JMAP specification.¶
Because keywords are case insensitive in IMAP but case sensitive in JMAP, the $mdnsent
keyword MUST always be used in lowercase.¶
Capabilities are announced as part of the standard JMAP Session resource; see [RFC8620], Section 2. This defines a new capability, "urn:ietf:params:jmap:mdn".¶
The capability "urn:ietf:params:jmap:mdn" being present in the "accountCapabilities" property of an account represents support for the "MDN" data type, parsing MDNs via the "MDN/parse" method, and creating and sending MDN messages via the "MDN/send" method. Servers that include the capability in one or more "accountCapabilities" properties MUST also include the property in the "capabilities" property.¶
The value of this "urn:ietf:params:jmap:mdn" property is an empty object both in the account's "accountCapabilities" property and in the "capabilities" property.¶
An MDN object has the following properties:¶
forEmailId: Id|null
¶
The Email id of the received message to which this MDN is related. This property MUST NOT be null for "MDN/send" but MAY be null in the response from the "MDN/parse" method.¶
subject: String|null
¶
The subject used as "Subject" header field for this MDN.¶
textBody: String|null
¶
The human-readable part of the MDN, as plain text.¶
includeOriginalMessage: Boolean
(default: false)¶
If true
, the content of the original message will appear in the third component of the multipart/report generated for the MDN. See [RFC8098] for details and security considerations.¶
reportingUA: String|null
¶
The name of the Mail User Agent (MUA) creating this MDN. It is used to build the MDN report part of the MDN. Note that a null
value may have better privacy properties.¶
disposition: Disposition
¶
The object containing the diverse MDN disposition options.¶
mdnGateway: String|null
(server-set)¶
The name of the gateway or Message Transfer Agent (MTA) that translated a foreign (non-Internet) message disposition notification into this MDN.¶
originalRecipient: String|null
(server-set)¶
The original recipient address as specified by the sender of the message for which the MDN is being issued.¶
finalRecipient: String|null
¶
The recipient for which the MDN is being issued. If set, it overrides the value that would be calculated by the server from the Identity defined in the "MDN/send" method, unless explicitly set by the client.¶
originalMessageId: String|null
(server-set)¶
The "Message-ID" header field [RFC5322] (not the JMAP id) of the message for which the MDN is being issued.¶
error: String[]|null
(server-set)¶
Additional information in the form of text messages when the "error" disposition modifier appears.¶
extensionFields: String[String]|null
¶
The object where keys are extension-field names, and values are extension-field values (see [RFC8098], Section 3.3).¶
A Disposition object has the following properties:¶
actionMode: String
¶
This MUST be one of the following strings: manual-action
/ automatic-action
¶
sendingMode: String
¶
This MUST be one of the following strings: mdn-sent-manually
/ mdn-sent-automatically
¶
type: String
¶
This MUST be one of the following strings: deleted
/ dispatched
/ displayed
/ processed
¶
See [RFC8098] for the exact meaning of these different fields. These fields are defined as case insensitive in [RFC8098] but are case sensitive in this RFC and MUST be converted to lowercase by "MDN/parse".¶
The "MDN/send" method sends a message in the style of [RFC5322] from an MDN object. When calling this method, the "using" property of the Request object MUST contain the capabilities "urn:ietf:params:jmap:mdn" and "urn:ietf:params:jmap:mail"; the latter because of the implicit call to "Email/set" and the use of Identity objects, which is described below. The method takes the following arguments:¶
accountId: Id
¶
The id of the account to use.¶
identityId: Id
¶
The id of the Identity to associate with these MDNs. The server will use this identity to define the sender of the MDNs and to set the "finalRecipient" field.¶
send: Id[MDN]
¶
A map of the creation id (client specified) to MDN objects.¶
onSuccessUpdateEmail: Id[PatchObject]|null
¶
A map of the id to an object containing properties to update on the Email object referenced by the "MDN/send" if the sending succeeds. This will always be a backward reference to the creation id (see the example below in Section 3.1).¶
The response has the following arguments:¶
accountId: Id
¶
The id of the account used for the call.¶
sent: Id[MDN]|null
¶
A map of the creation id to an MDN containing any properties that were not set by the client. This includes any properties that were omitted by the client and thus set to a default by the server. This argument is null if no MDN objects were successfully sent.¶
notSent: Id[SetError]|null
¶
A map of the creation id to a SetError object for each record that failed to be sent or null if all successful.¶
In this context, the existing SetError types defined in [RFC8620] and [RFC8621] are interpreted as follows:¶
The following is a new SetError:¶
$mdnsent
keyword already set.¶
If the "accountId" or "identityId" given cannot be found, the method call is rejected with an invalidArguments
error.¶
The client MUST NOT issue an "MDN/send" request if the message has the $mdnsent
keyword set.¶
When sending the MDN, the server is in charge of generating the "originalRecipient" and "originalMessageId" fields according to [RFC8098]. "finalRecipient" will also generally be generated by the server based on the provided identity, but if specified by the client and allowed (see Section 5), the server will use the client-provided value.¶
The client is expected to explicitly update each "Email" for which an "MDN/send" has been invoked in order to set the $mdnsent
keyword on these messages. To ensure that, the server MUST reject an "MDN/send" that does not result in setting the keyword $mdnsent
. Thus, the server MUST check that the "onSuccessUpdateEmail" property of the method is correctly set to update this keyword.¶
This method allows a client to parse blobs as messages in the style of [RFC5322] to get MDN objects. This can be used to parse and get detailed information about blobs referenced in the "mdnBlobIds" of the EmailSubmission object or any email message the client could expect to be an MDN.¶
The "forEmailId" property can be null or missing if the "originalMessageId" property is missing or does not refer to an existing message or if the server cannot efficiently calculate the related message (for example, if several messages get the same "Message-ID" header field).¶
The "MDN/parse" method takes the following arguments:¶
The response has the following arguments:¶
accountId: Id
¶
The id of the account used for the call.¶
parsed: Id[MDN]|null
¶
A map of the blob id to a parsed MDN representation for each successfully parsed blob or null if none.¶
notParsable: Id[]|null
¶
A list of ids given that corresponds to blobs that could not be parsed as MDNs or null if none.¶
notFound: Id[]|null
¶
A list of blob ids given that could not be found or null if none.¶
The following additional errors may be returned instead of the "MDN/parse" response:¶
A client can use the following request to send an MDN back to the sender:¶
[[ "MDN/send", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "identityId": "I64588216", "send": { "k1546": { "forEmailId": "Md45b47b4877521042cec0938", "subject": "Read receipt for: World domination", "textBody": "This receipt shows that the email has been displayed on your recipient's computer. There is no guarantee it has been read or understood.", "reportingUA": "joes-pc.cs.example.com; Foomail 97.1", "disposition": { "actionMode": "manual-action", "sendingMode": "mdn-sent-manually", "type": "displayed" }, "extension": { "EXTENSION-EXAMPLE": "example.com" } } }, "onSuccessUpdateEmail": { "#k1546": { "keywords/$mdnsent": true } } }, "0" ]]¶
If the email id matches an existing email message without the $mdnsent
keyword, the server can answer:¶
[[ "MDN/send", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "sent": { "k1546": { "finalRecipient": "rfc822; [email protected]", "originalMessageId": "<[email protected]>" } } }, "0" ], [ "Email/set", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "oldState": "23", "newState": "42", "updated": { "Md45b47b4877521042cec0938": {} } }, "0" ]]¶
If the $mdnsent
keyword has already been set, the server can answer an error:¶
[[ "MDN/send", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "notSent": { "k1546": { "type": "mdnAlreadySent", "description" : "$mdnsent keyword is already present" } } }, "0" ]]¶
This is done with the "Email/set" "create" method of [RFC8621].¶
[[ "Email/set", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "create": { "k2657": { "mailboxIds": { "2ea1ca41b38e": true }, "keywords": { "$seen": true, "$draft": true }, "from": [{ "name": "Joe Bloggs", "email": "[email protected]" }], "to": [{ "name": "John", "email": "[email protected]" }], "header:Disposition-Notification-To:asText": "[email protected]", "subject": "World domination", ... } } }, "0" ]]¶
Note the specified "Disposition-Notification-To" header field indicating where to send the MDN (usually the sender of the message).¶
The client issues a parse request:¶
[[ "MDN/parse", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "blobIds": [ "0f9f65ab-dc7b-4146-850f-6e4881093965" ] }, "0" ]]¶
The server responds:¶
[[ "MDN/parse", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "parsed": { "0f9f65ab-dc7b-4146-850f-6e4881093965": { "forEmailId": "Md45b47b4877521042cec0938", "subject": "Read receipt for: World domination", "textBody": "This receipt shows that the email has been displayed on your recipient's computer. There is no guarantee it has been read or understood.", "reportingUA": "joes-pc.cs.example.com; Foomail 97.1", "disposition": { "actionMode": "manual-action", "sendingMode": "mdn-sent-manually", "type": "displayed" }, "finalRecipient": "rfc822; [email protected]", "originalMessageId": "<[email protected]>" } } }, "0" ]]¶
In the case that a blob id is not found, the server would respond:¶
[[ "MDN/parse", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "notFound": [ "0f9f65ab-dc7b-4146-850f-6e4881093965" ] }, "0" ]]¶
If the blob id has been found but is not parsable, the server would respond:¶
[[ "MDN/parse", { "accountId": "ue150411c", "notParsable": [ "0f9f65ab-dc7b-4146-850f-6e4881093965" ] }, "0" ]]¶
This section registers the "mdn" JMAP Capability in the "JMAP Capabilities" registry as follows:¶
IANA has registered one new error code in the "JMAP Error Codes" registry, as defined in [RFC8620].¶
The same considerations regarding MDN (see [RFC8098] and [RFC3503]) apply to this document.¶
In order to reinforce trust regarding the relation between the user sending an email message and the identity of this user, the server SHOULD validate in conformance to the provided Identity that the user is permitted to use the "finalRecipient" value and return a forbiddenFrom
error if not.¶