Javamail Message, set as seen while folder is open in read only mode?

Question

I have an IMAP Folder opened as READ_ONLY and I want to set a specific message as SEEN (read) at a specific point in my program.

I tried to find a way to change the mode from READ_ONLY to READ_WRITE on the fly but apparently the only way to do this is closing the Folder and opening it again.

I wrote a hefty method that achieves the above but I'm really unhappy about the situation.

If I open the folder as READ_WRITE from the beginning, the messages gets marked as READ during my processing, which is not the point of time that I want the message to be marked as READ.

Here have a peek on the method that I wrote and don't giggle.

/**
 * @param message The message to be processed.
 * @param read True to mark as READ, False to mark as UNREAD.
 */
public static void markMessageAsRead(Message message, boolean read) {
        try {
            //Getting required variables
            Folder messageFolder = message.getFolder();
            int initialFolderMode = messageFolder.getMode();
            boolean initialFolderOpenState = messageFolder.isOpen();

            //If the folder is readonly then lets set it to readwrite
            if(initialFolderMode == Folder.READ_ONLY) {
                if(initialFolderOpenState) {
                    messageFolder.close(false);
                }

                messageFolder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);
            }

            //Make sure folder is open (incase the above if didn't evaluate)
            if(!initialFolderOpenState) {
                messageFolder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);
            }

            //Marking message as seen/unseen
            message.setFlag(Flags.Flag.SEEN, read);

            //Now lets revert the folder to it's state before it came here
            if(initialFolderOpenState) {
                if(!messageFolder.isOpen()) {
                    messageFolder.open(initialFolderMode);
                }
            } else {
                if(messageFolder.isOpen()) {
                    messageFolder.close(false);
                }
            }
        } catch (MessagingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
}

Is there a way to achieve what I want in a more neatly manner?

Answer 1

The conventional solution is to open the folder in read-write mode and then use the peek functionality when you want to fetch data without setting the seen flag. Commands that peek do not set the seen flag.