Java and Electronic Mail - Java - page 703

Discussion
The JavaMail API is designed to be easy to use. Store encapsulates the information and ac-
cess methods for a particular type of mail storage; the steps for using it are listed in the side-
bar.
IAN'S BASIC STEPS: READING EMAIL USING STORE
Here is how you read email using Store :
1. Get a Session object using Session.getDefaultInstance() . You can pass Sys-
tem.getProperties() as the Properties argument.
2. Get a Store from the Session object.
3. Get the root Folder .
4. If the root Folder can contain subfolders, list them.
5. For each Folder that can contain messages, call getMessages() , which returns an array
of Message objects.
6. Do what you will with the messages (usually, display the headers and let the user select
which message to view).
Java provides a Store class for the IMAP and POP3 transport mechanisms. The programs in
this chapter will work more-or-less the same whether you use either of these, or a third-party
store. I've tested some of the programs using the Unix mbox protocol, [ 52 ] which reads the
mailbox “spool file” typically found on Unix mail servers. I've tested others using the POP
and IMAP stores. The programs can be made to use any of these (assuming it's on your
classpath, of ourse) just by passing the appropriate protocol name where “pop3” appears in
the following examples. I've tested several of the programs using Sun's POP store and sever-
al POP servers (CUCIpop and PMDF).
I (try to) delete most of the email I get on one of my systems, so there were only two mes-
sages to be read when I ran my first “mailbox lister” program:
$ java email.MailLister pop3 dalai ian '*' /var/mail/ian
Password: (not shown)