Building a simple IMAP Client that displays the subject of the messages in the “inbox” Folder using Maven (I just like Maven).

1. Create a new Maven project

   mvn archetype:create -DgroupId=com.hascode.imap -DartifactId=imap-client

2. Edit your pom.xml and add some dependencies

   <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.hascode.imap</groupId>
    <artifactId>imap-client</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <dependencies>
    <dependency>
    <groupId>junit</groupId>
    <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
    <version>4.8.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
    <groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
    <artifactId>mail</artifactId>
    <version>1.4.2</version>
    </dependency>
    </dependencies>
   </project>

1. Create a package .. something like com.hascode.imap.client ;)
2. Create a simple mail client using javax.mail in a class named ImapClient

   package com.hascode.imap.client;
    
   import javax.mail.Folder;
   import javax.mail.Message;
   import javax.mail.MessagingException;
   import javax.mail.Session;
   import javax.mail.Store;
    
   public class ImapClient {
   private Session session = null;
   private Store store = null;
   private String host = null;
   private String userName = null;
   private String password = null;
    
   public ImapClient(String host, String userName, String password){
   this.host = host;
   this.userName = userName;
   this.password = password;
   }
    
   public boolean getMail() throws MessagingException {
   session = Session.getDefaultInstance(System.getProperties(),null);
   //        session.setDebug(true);
   System.out.println("get store..");
   store = session.getStore("imaps");
   System.out.println("connect..");
   store.connect(this.host, this.userName, this.password);
   System.out.println("get default folder ..");
   Folder folder = store.getDefaultFolder();
   folder = folder.getFolder("inbox");
   folder.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);
   System.out.println("reading messages..");
   Message[] messages = folder.getMessages();
   for(Message m:messages){
   System.out.println(m.getSubject());
   }
   return false;
   }
   }

3. Test the result in an unit test or a test class like this one

   package com.hascode.imap.client;
    
   import javax.mail.MessagingException;
    
   public class Main {
    
   public static void main(String[] args) {
   ImapClient c = new ImapClient("<yourhostname>", "<yourusername>","<yourpassword>");
   try {
   c.getMail();
   } catch (MessagingException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
   }
   }
    
   }

If something goes wrong – use the debugging feature in the session object:

session.setDebug(true);

If you’re interested in creating an e-mail server in java for testing please feel free to take a look at my tutorial: “Integration Testing IMAP, SMTP and POP3 with GreenMail“.

• JavaMail API

Tags: imap, javax, mail client, maven

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 3rd, 2010 at 8:50 am and is filed under Java, Snippet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.