[Evolution-hackers] Scripting Moving of Messages

[Patrick Riley <pfr+evo cs cmu edu>]

Apologies if this is not the correct list. I am not currently
programming for evolution, but would be willing to write code to solve
the problem I am facing. I was directed to this list by those on the
evolution users lists.

The original discussion can be found here:
http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/users/2003-April/008871.html

The question I have is (basically) this:

Is there any way to script the moving of messages from one folder to
another? I want some process which is constant time for me (in terms of
the number of operations I the human have to perform) with respect to
the number of affected folders.

** More detail about what I am trying to accomplish:

I receive mail on an IMAP server. I want to leave the "current" mail on
the server so that I can see it from several locations. However, I only
have a limited amount of room on the server, so I want to move "old"
messages from the server to local folders.

I have a large number of rules which filter messages into approximately
125 hierarchically arranged folders, so individually selecting each
folder and moving the messages by hand is not really feasible.

I want to keep the same folder hierarchy for the local folders as I have
on my IMAP server.

** The start of a solution?

Through some discussion on the users lists, I have found a possible
start of a solution. First, I can easily create a virtual folder which
contains all the messages which I would like to move from the IMAP
server to the local folders. I could start evolution with a special set
of filters with the sole purpose of moving messages to local disk. I
could then go into the virtual folder and "Apply Filters" and be done.
However, I would need each filter to have a criterion for the current
folder in which the message exists (so that the message can be moved to
the appropriate local folder). I see the "Expression" criterion as an
option, but I can find no documentation about it, nor do I know if the
expression could evaluate based on the current folder of the message.
Can anyone 
a) tell me if "Expression" could do the evaluation I want?
b) if so, how that might be done or point me to some documentation?


I would be willing to write some code to accomplish this if someone
could point me in the right direction.

Apologies for the long email and thank you for any help you can give.
-- 
Patrick Riley
Fourth Year Ph.D. Student                                 
Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University     
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pfr