JMAP Backend Information

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Every server-side software has its own quirks. For example, the JMAP standard might only have been partially implemented by a server or design decisions might have been taken that let the server deviate from what is actually required by [RFC8620]. Servers might also have unintended bugs or have certain restrictions that are not sufficiently reflected by their list of supported server capabilities.¶

Such behavior typically occurs for edge-cases. Nonetheless, interoperable clients that aim to have a successful structured data exchange with such "unique" servers need to handle these quirks with workarounds on the client-side. Clients only want to apply special workarounds in situations where they are truly necessary. This is typically done by identifying which server-side software they are communicating with.¶

JMAP does not provide a standardized way to retrieve an identifier of the product that is residing on the server side. Due to the lack of standardization clients are left to identify misbehaving servers by error-prone means. Examples are checking against a list of known URLs or checking known unique responses, typically only sent by certain products. This makes identifying products time-consuming and brittle.¶

Related functionality in other standards are the PRODID property in iCalendar [RFC5545] and vCard [RFC6350], which allows identifying the product that produced the files. ManageSieve [RFC5804] and JMAP Sieve [I-D.ietf-jmap-sieve] define an implementation property, which allows identifying the Sieve implementation.¶

{
  "capabilities": {
    "urn:ietf:params:jmap:core:backendinfo": {
      "apiBackend": {
        "name": "OpenXPort/Horde",
        "version": "1.0.0"
      },
      "product": {
        "name": "Horde Webmailer",
        "version": "1.0.0"
      },
      "environment": {
        "name": "PHP",
        "version": "5.5"
      }
    }
  },
    ...
}

2. Security considerations

All security considerations of JMAP [RFC8620] apply to this specification.¶

3. IANA Considerations

4. Acknowledgements

Bron Gondwana, Neil Jenkins, Alexey Melnikov, Ken Murchison, Robert Stepanek and the JMAP working group at the IETF.¶

Authors' Addresses