This document describes a language for filtering email messages at time of final delivery. It is designed to be implementable on either a mail client or mail server. It is meant to be extensible, simple, and independent of access protocol, mail architecture, and operating system. It is suitable for running on a mail server where users may not be allowed to execute arbitrary programs, such as on black box Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) servers, as the base language has no variables, loops, or ability to shell out to external programs.
This document describes a language for filtering email messages at
time of final delivery. It is designed to be implementable on either
a mail client or mail server. It is meant to be extensible, simple,
and independent of access protocol, mail architecture, and operating
system. It is suitable for running on a mail server where users may
not be allowed to execute arbitrary programs, such as on black box
Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) servers, as the base language
has no variables, loops, or ability to shell out to external
programs.
Below are some simple Sieve code examples, more can be found at http://sieve.info/examplescripts
The Pigeonhole project provides Sieve support as a plugin for Dovecot's Local Delivery Agent (LDA) and also for its LMTP service. The plugin implements a Sieve interpreter, which filters incoming messages using a script specified in the Sieve language (RFC 5228). The Sieve script is provided by the user and, using that Sieve script, the user can customize how incoming messages are handled. Messages can be delivered to specific folders, forwarded, rejected, discarded, etc.
sieve - Thunderbird Sieve Addon