Maildir access via https instead of IMAP?

[cypa]

Hello, Isotope looks very nice, but I'm thinking about more lightweight email client system. Something like
dovecot Maildir storage - webserver - javascript frontend + maybe some simple dovecot API.
Since Maildir storage format is pretty much ready to read messages whould it be possible to avoid using IMAP client at all? What do you think?

[shift-reality]

IMAP is RFC protocol for reading mails.. Isotope-backend already works as simple IMAP-HTTP API, and other option - is adopt SMTP requests.
We use DBMail , this server don't implement any HTTPs API... Just POP3 and imap, so using dovecot http api can affect list of supported mail servers..

[manusa]

Future plans for Isotope include support for other protocols (Exchange, POP3...) by means of adding alternative/additional microservices implementing the functionality and following the current API spec.

As shift-reality pointed out, the back-end/server component of the application is just an IMAP/SMTP<->HTTP (Rest) API, so in the end, everything is delegated to the IMAP server.
As no operations are done, performance is really good. The design is also scalable, so the server microservice can be elastically escalated to adapt to the needs of each deployment.

For the current IMAP gateway, the idea is to support most IMAP servers, so no extended IMAP capabilities (such as CONDSTORE...) are used. This is also quite a challenge, because most of the issues with data synchronization would be gone if support for older servers was declined.

I understand from your suggestion that what you want in your design is to remove Dovecot. I get your point, but take into account that Dovecot does more things than just reading files from your Maildir.

Anyway, I can try to publish a stable API specification (Consumer Driven Contract) so that anyone can build an API implementation for whatever protocol or custom solution in order to use Isotope front-end solution.