Snippet: Simple One-Minute IMAP Client

April 3rd, 2010 by

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

 

Project Setup / 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>

Creating the E-Mail Client

  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();
    }
    }
     
    }

Debugging an E-Mail Session

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

session.setDebug(true);

Creating an E-Mail Server in Java

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“.

Resources

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