Fix: Sort emails by date instead of UID order#98
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Wh1isper merged 1 commit intoai-zerolab:mainfrom Jan 15, 2026
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The order parameter was sorting by IMAP UID order, which doesn't guarantee chronological order on all servers. ProtonMail Bridge (and potentially others) assign UIDs in non-chronological order, causing order=desc to return oldest emails instead of newest. This fix: - Fetches metadata for all matching emails - Sorts by the actual email Date header - Applies pagination after sorting Fixes ai-zerolab#97 Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Wh1isper
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I'm concerned about potential performance issues when dealing with a large number of files, but we can merge it first.
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Addresses performance concern raised in ai-zerolab#98 review. The previous fix fetched headers for ALL emails before sorting, causing O(n) network calls for large mailboxes. Changes: - Add SORT capability detection (RFC 5256) - When SORT supported: server-side sorting, fetch only page headers - Fallback: batch fetch Date headers, sort, fetch page headers - Reduces network calls from O(n) to O(2) for any mailbox size Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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@Wh1isper Good catch on the performance concern! I've addressed this in #100 which:
This reduces network calls from O(n) to O(1) — for a mailbox with 10,000 emails requesting page 1, we now make 2 IMAP calls instead of 10,000. |
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Summary
orderparameter inlist_emails_metadatato sort by actual email date instead of IMAP UID orderChanges
DateheaderTest plan
order=descshould return newest emails firstFixes #97