Reading Emails

[Richard West]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to read emails in from a stmp server without javamail api's and i so far have only managed to read the e-mail messages but i can't seem to read any attachments that come with it. I am not very sure as to how i should separate the message from the attachment. This is what i have so far

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
 
public class displayMail {
 
public static void main(String arg[]) {
   //
   //  displayMail [mailServer] [user] [password]
   try {
     Socket s = new Socket(arg[0], 110);
     BufferedReader in  = new BufferedReader(
         new InputStreamReader(s.getInputStream()));
     BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(
         new OutputStreamWriter(s.getOutputStream()));
     displayMail t = new displayMail();
     String msg;
     t.loginMail(in, out, arg[1], arg[2]);
     int i = t.checkMyMail(in,out);
     if (i==0) {
       System.out.println("No mail waiting.");
       }
     else {
       for (int j=1; j <= i; j++) {
          msg = t.getMail(in, out, j);
          System.out.println("*****");
          System.out.println(msg);
          System.out.println("*****");
          }
        }
     }
   catch (Exception e) {
     e.printStackTrace();
     }
   }
 
public String getMail
   (BufferedReader in, BufferedWriter out, int i)
   throws IOException {
   String s = "";
   String t = "";
   send(out, "RETR "+i);
   while (((s = in.readLine()) != null)
       &&(!(s.equals("."))))
         t += s + "\n";
   return t;
   }
 
 
private void send(BufferedWriter out, String s) throws IOException {
   out.write(s+"\n");
   out.flush();
   }
 
private String receive(BufferedReader in) throws IOException {
   return in.readLine();
   }
 
private void loginMail(BufferedReader in, BufferedWriter out,
    String user, String pass)
    throws IOException {
   receive(in);
   send(out, "USER " + user);
   receive(in);
   send(out, "PASS " + pass);
   receive(in);
   }
 
private int checkMyMail
     (BufferedReader in, BufferedWriter out)
      throws IOException {
   return GetNumberOfMessages(in, out);
   }
 
 
 
public int GetNumberOfMessages
   (BufferedReader in, BufferedWriter out) throws IOException {
   int i = 0;
   String s;
 
   send(out, "LIST");
   receive(in);
   while((s = receive(in)) != null) {
      if (!(s.equals("."))) { i++; }
      else return i;
      }
   return 0;
   }
}

What are the necessary things that i need to do or changes to the above code in order to read the attachments correctly??

Some codings would really be helpfull

Thank You

Yours Sincerely

Richard West

[S Hussain]

I am not clear about the code. The code should have a way of readingt multipart mime messages. Generally attachment(s) are in multipart section. Also, attachments may be encoded by say base64, etc.

I guess it is easy to work with java mail api

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Hi Richard,

First, you're not reading from an SMTP server; you're talking to a POP server -- a different protocol! SMTP listens on port 25, and you send mail by giving it to the server.

Second: multipart MIME messages are really quite complex. Why do you want to reinvent the wheel? Why not simply use JavaMail?

[Richard West]

Hi everyone,

Sorry about that what i meant to say was reading from a POP3 server. Why i am not using the Java mail is because it is not part of J2SE and some of the people that use my application don't know how to install that java mail extension. They assume that by downloading the entire JRE means that all my program should be up and running.

Richard West

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

But you can simply distribute JavaMail as part of your application.

[Richard West]

Hi everyone,

Ernest, i don't get what you mean that i can distribute it together with my application. Could you explain in detail if it is of no inconvinience to you. One more thing what about the activation jar.

Richard West

[Van Glass]

In order to read attachments from an email you need to break out the MIME parts of the message using the message boundary specified in the Content-Type header.

http://www.jscape.com/articles/retrieving_email_using_java.html

[Richard West]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to do this in pure Java and am not looking for a
commercial library. If i had wanted to use a library i would have used JavaMail

Richard West

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

JavaMail doesn't have to be copied into the JRE or anything; it's just a couple of JAR files. However you deploy your application, just include JavaMail.