1

JavaMailTM API
Design Specification
Version 1.6

Send feedback to [email protected]

Oracle America, Inc. August 2017

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Redwood City, California 94065, U.S.A.
Specification: JSR-919 JavaMail(TM) Specification ("Specification")
Version: 1.6
Status: Final Release
Specification Lead: Oracle America, Inc. ("Specification Lead")
Release: August 2017

Copyright 2013, 2017 Oracle America, Inc.

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August 2017
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August 2017
August 2017
 Contents iii

Contents
Chapter 1:
Introduction 1
Target Audience 1
Acknowledgments 1

Chapter 2:
Goals and Design Principles 3

Chapter 3:
Architectural Overview 5
JavaMail Layered Architecture 5
JavaMail Class Hierarchy 7
The JavaMail Framework 8
Major JavaMail API Components 10
The Message Class 10
Message Storage and Retrieval 10
Message Composition and Transport 11
The Session Class 11
The JavaMail Event Model 11
Using the JavaMail API 12

Chapter 4:
The Message Class 13
The Part Interface 16
Message Attributes 16
The ContentType Attribute 16
The Address Class 18
The BodyPart Class 18
The Multipart Class 19
The Flags Class 22
Message Creation And Transmission 23

Chapter 5:
The Mail Session 25

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

iv Contents

The Provider Registry 26

Resource Files 26
Provider 28
Protocol Selection and Defaults 28
Example Scenarios 29
Managing Security 30
Store and Folder URLs 31

Chapter 6:
Message Storage And Retrieval 33
The Store Class 33
Store Events 34
The Folder Class 34
The FetchProfile Method 35
Folder Events 36
The Expunge Process 37
The Search Process 39

Chapter 7:
The JavaBeans Activation Framework 41
Accessing the Content 41
Example: Message Output 42
Operating on the Content 43
Example: Viewing a Message 43
Example: Showing Attachments 43
Adding Support for Content Types 44

Chapter 8:
Message Composition 45
Building a Message Object 45
Message Creation 45
Setting Message Attributes 46
Setting Message Content 47
Building a MIME Multipart Message 48

Chapter 9:
Transport Protocols and Mechanisms 51
Obtaining the Transport Object 51
Transport Methods 51
Transport Events 52
ConnectionEvent 52

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 Contents v

TransportEvent 53
Using The Transport Class 54

Chapter 10:
Internet Mail 55
The MimeMessage Class 56
The MimeBodyPart Class 57
The MimeMultipart Class 58
The MimeUtility Class 58
Content Encoding and Decoding 59
Header Encoding and Decoding 59
The ContentType Class 60

Appendix A:
Environment Properties 61

Appendix B:
Examples Using the JavaMail API 63
Example: Showing a Message 63
Example: Listing Folders 71
Example: Search a Folder for a Message 74
Example: Monitoring a Mailbox 79
Example: Sending a Message 80

Appendix C:
Message Security 83
Overview 83
Displaying an Encrypted/Signed Message 83
MultiPartEncrypted/Signed Classes 83
Reading the Contents 84
Verifying Signatures 84
Creating a Message 85

Appendix D:
Part and Multipart Class Diagram 87

Appendix E:
MimeMessage Object Hierarchy 89

Appendix F:
Features Added in JavaMail 1.1 91
The MessageContext Class and MessageAware Interface 91

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

vi Contents

The getMessageID method 91

Additions to the InternetAddress Class 92
Additions to the MimeUtility Class 92
New SearchTerms 92
Additions to the Folder Class 93
New Service Class 93

Appendix G:
Features Added in JavaMail 1.2 95
Additions to the MimeMessage Class 95
Additions to the MimeMultipart Class 96
The getRawInputStream method 96
Additions to the InternetAddress Class 96
The MailDateFormat Class 97
Additions to Exceptions and Events 97
Additions to the Session Class 97
Additions to the MimeUtility Class 98
Additions for serializable javax.mail.search terms 98
Additions to the Store Class 99
New ContentDisposition Class 99
New performance improvements 99
Additions to the ParameterList class 100

Appendix H:
Features Added in JavaMail 1.3 101
Add setSender and getSender methods to MimeMessage (4405115) 101
Add setContentID method to MimeBodyPart (4377720) 102
Add mail.mime.charset property (4377731) 102
Add getDeletedMesageCount method to Folder (4388730) 102
Support parsing illegal Internet addresses (4650940) 103
Add mail.mime.address.strict property (4650940) 104
Add mail.mime.decodetext.strict property (4201203) 105
Add mail.mime.encodeeol.strict property (4650949) 105
Add isGroup and getGroup methods to InternetAddress (4650952) 105
Support per-session debug output stream (4517686) 106

Appendix I:
Features Added in JavaMail 1.4 107
Add MimePart.setText(text, charset, subtype) method (6300765) 107
Add mail.mime.encodefilename and decodefilename properties (6300768) 108

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Contents vii

Add Service.connect(user, password) (6300771) 108

Add mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingendboundary System property
(4971381) 109
Add MimeMultipart.isComplete() method (6300811) 110
Add mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingboundaryparameter property
(6300814) 110
Add MimeMultipart getPreamble and setPreamble methods (6300828) 111
Add MimeMessage.updateMessageID() protected method (6300831) 111
Add MimeMessage.createMimeMessage() protected method (6300833) 112
Make the part field of MimePartDataSource protected (6300834) 112
Folder.getSeparator should not require the folder to exist (6301381) 113
Add PreencodedMimeBodyPart class (6301386) 113
Add MimeBodyPart attachFile and saveFile methods (6301390) 114
Add MimeUtility fold and unfold methods (6302118) 115
Allow more control over headers in InternetHeaders object (6302832) 116
Allow applications to dynamically register new protocol providers (6302835) 116
Allow applications to dynamically register address type mappings (4377727) 117
ParameterList class should support non US-ASCII parameters (4107342) 117
Standard interface for Stores that support quotas (6304051) 118
Add ByteArrayDataSource class (4623517) 120
Add SharedByteArrayInputStream class (6304189) 122
Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193) 123

Appendix J:
Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 129
Add FetchProfile.Item.SIZE (37) 129
Fix protected fields in final classes in javax.mail.search (38) 129
Add MimeMultipart(String subtype, BodyPart... bps) constructor (39) 130
Exceptions should support exception chaining (40) 130
ParameterList needs to support use by IMAP (41) 133
ContentType and ContentDisposition toString should never return null (42) 133
Add Transport.send(msg, username, password) method (44) 134
Add MimeMessage.setFrom(String) method (45) 135
Add Message.getSesssion() method (46) 135
MimeBodyPart.attachFile should set the disposition to ATTACHMENT (47) 136
Add MimeMessage.reply(replyToAll, setAnswered) method (48) 137
Add additional “next” methods to HeaderTokenizer (49) 137
Add @MailSessionDefinition and @MailSessionDefinitions for Java EE 7 (51) 138
Make cachedContent field protected in MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart (52) 140
Make MimeMultipart fields protected to allow subclassing (53) 141

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viii Contents

Need simple way to override MIME type and encoding of attachment (55) 143
Enable RFC 2231 support by default (56) 144

Appendix K:
Features Added in JavaMail 1.6 147
MailSessionDefinition should use Repeatable annotation for Java EE 8 (226) 147
MimeMessage.updateHeaders should set Date header if not already set (77) 147
Update public API to use generics (232) 148
MailDateFormat changes for version 1.6 (174) 151
Store, Transport, and Folder should implement AutoCloseable (159) 153
The UIDFolder interface should have a getter for UIDNEXT (104) 154
The UIDFolder interface should have a MAXUID constant (244) 155
MimeMultipart should throw ParseException for parsing errors (75) 155
Support addressing i18n via RFC 6530/6531/6532 (93) 156
Look for resource files in <java.home>/conf on JDK 1.9 (247) 158
Flags convenience methods (249) 159

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 1

Chapter 1:

Introduction
In the years since its first release, the JavaTM programming language has matured to become a
platform. The Java platform has added functionality, including distributed computing with
RMI and CORBA, and a component architecture (JavaBeansTM). Java applications have also
matured, and many need an addition to the Java platform: a mail and messaging framework.
The JavaMailTM API described in this specification satisfies that need.
The JavaMail API provides a set of abstract classes defining objects that comprise a mail
system. The API defines classes like Message, Store and Transport. The API can be extended
and can be subclassed to provide new protocols and to add functionality when necessary.
In addition, the API provides concrete subclasses of the abstract classes. These subclasses,
including MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart, implement widely used Internet mail protocols
and conform to specifications RFC822 and RFC2045. They are ready to be used in application
development.

Target Audience
The JavaMail API is designed to serve several audiences:
? Client, server, or middleware developers interested in building mail and messaging
applications using the Java programming language.
? Application developers who need to “mail-enable” their applications.
? Service Providers who need to implement specific access and transfer protocols. For
example; a telecommunications company can use the JavaMail API to implement a
PAGER Transport protocol that sends mail messages to alphanumeric pagers.

Acknowledgments
The authors of this specification are John Mani, Bill Shannon, Max Spivak, Kapono Carter and
Chris Cotton.
We would like to acknowledge the following people for their comments and feedback on the
initial drafts of this document:
? Terry Cline, John Russo, Bill Yeager and Monica Gaines: Sun Microsystems.
? Arn Perkins and John Ragan: Novell, Inc.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

2 Chapter 1: Introduction
Acknowledgments

? Nick Shelness: Lotus Development Corporation.

? Juerg von Kaenel: IBM Corporation.
? Prasad Yendluri, Jamie Zawinski, Terry Weissman and Gena Cunanan: Netscape
Communications Corporation.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 3

Chapter 2:

Goals and Design Principles

The JavaMail API is designed to make adding electronic mail capability to simple applications
easy, while also supporting the creation of sophisticated user interfaces. It includes appropriate
convenience classes which encapsulate common mail functions and protocols. It fits with other
packages for the Java platform in order to facilitate its use with other Java APIs, and it uses
familiar programming models.
The JavaMail API is therefore designed to satisfy the following development and runtime
requirements:
? Simple, straightforward class design is easy for a developer to learn and implement.
? Use of familiar concepts and programming models support code development that
interfaces well with other Java APIs.
? Uses familiar exception-handling and JDK 1.1 event-handling programming models.
? Uses features from the JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF) to handle access to
data based on data-type and to facilitate the addition of data types and commands on
those data types. The JavaMail API provides convenience functions to simplify these
coding tasks.
? Lightweight classes and interfaces make it easy to add basic mail-handling tasks to any
application.
? Supports the development of robust mail-enabled applications, that can handle a variety of
complex mail message formats, data types, and access and transport protocols.
The JavaMail API draws heavily from IMAP, MAPI, CMC, c-client and other messaging
system APIs: many of the concepts present in these other systems are also present in the
JavaMail API. It is simpler to use because it uses features of the Java programming language
not available to these other APIs, and because it uses the Java programming language’s object
model to shelter applications from implementation complexity.
The JavaMail API design is driven by the needs of the applications it supports—but it is also
important to consider the needs of API implementors. It is critically important to enable the
implementation of messaging systems written using the Java programming language that
interoperate with existing messaging systems—especially Internet mail. It is also important to
anticipate the development of new messaging systems. The JavaMail API conforms to current
standards while not being so constrained by current standards that it stifles future innovation.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

4 Chapter 2: Goals and Design Principles

The JavaMail API supports many different messaging system implementations—different

message stores, different message formats, and different message transports. The JavaMail
API provides a set of base classes and interfaces that define the API for client applications.
Many simple applications will only need to interact with the messaging system through these
base classes and interfaces.
JavaMail subclasses can expose additional messaging system features. For instance, the
MimeMessage subclass exposes and implements common characteristics of an Internet mail
message, as defined by RFC822 and MIME standards. Developers can subclass JavaMail
classes to provide the implementations of particular messaging systems, such as IMAP4,
POP3, and SMTP.
The base JavaMail classes include many convenience APIs that simplify use of the API, but
don’t add any functionality. The implementation subclasses are not required to implement
those convenience methods. The implementation subclasses must implement only the core
classes and methods that provide functionality required for the implementation.
Alternately, a messaging system can choose to implement all of the JavaMail API directly,
allowing it to take advantage of performance optimizations, perhaps through use of batched
protocol requests. The IMAP4 protocol implementation takes advantage of this approach.
The JavaMail API uses the Java programming language to good effect to strike a balance
between simplicity and sophistication. Simple tasks are easy, and sophisticated functionality is
possible.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 5

Chapter 3:

Architectural Overview
This section describes the JavaMail architecture, defines major classes and interfaces
comprising that architecture, and lists major functions that the architecture implements.
JavaMail provides elements that are used to construct an interface to a messaging system,
including system components and interfaces. While this specification does not define any
specific implementation, JavaMail does include several classes that implement RFC822 and
MIME Internet messaging standards. These classes are delivered as part of the JavaMail class
package.

JavaMail Layered Architecture

The JavaMail architectural components are layered as shown below:
? The Abstract Layer declares classes, interfaces and abstract methods intended to support
mail handling functions that all mail systems support. API elements comprising the
Abstract Layer are intended to be subclassed and extended as necessary in order to
support standard data types, and to interface with message access and message transport
protocols as necessary.
? The internet implementation layer implements part of the abstract layer using internet
standards - RFC822 and MIME.
? JavaMail uses the JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF) in order to encapsulate
message data, and to handle commands intended to interact with that data. Interaction
with message data should take place via JAF-aware JavaBeans, which are not provided by
the JavaMail API.

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6 Chapter 3: Architectural Overview
JavaMail Layered Architecture

JavaMail clients use the JavaMail API and Service Providers implement the JavaMail API.
The layered design architecture allows clients to use the same JavaMail API calls to send,
receive and store a variety of messages using different data-types from different message
stores and using different message transport protocols.

FIGURE 3-1

Mail-enabled Application

Java Bean - used to interact and

display message content

JavaMail
API JavaMail
Abstract Class Layer

Internet Mail
Implementation Class Layer

IMAP / POP3 / NNTP implementation Layer

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Chapter 3: Architectural Overview 7
JavaMail Class Hierarchy

JavaMail Class Hierarchy

The figure below shows major classes and interfaces comprising the JavaMail API. See
“Major JavaMail API Components” on page 10 for brief descriptions of all components shown
on this diagram.

FIGURE 3-2

Legend
Interface Implements
Part Class Extends
Container Class

Java Implementation Layer

Message MimeMessage

MimePart

MimeBodyPart

Bodypart
MimeMultipart
Multipart Container
Container Class
Class

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

8 Chapter 3: Architectural Overview
The JavaMail Framework

The JavaMail Framework

The JavaMail API is intended to perform the following functions, which comprise the standard
mail handling process for a typical client application:
? Create a mail message consisting of a collection of header attributes and a block of data
of some known data type as specified in the Content-Type header field. JavaMail uses
the Part interface and the Message class to define a mail message. It uses the JAF-
defined DataHandler object to contain data placed in the message.
? Create a Session object, which authenticates the user, and controls access to the
message store and transport.
? Send the message to its recipient list.
? Retrieve a message from a message store.
? Execute a high-level command on a retrieved message. High-level commands like view
and print are intended to be implemented via JAF-Aware JavaBeans.

Note – The JavaMail framework does not define mechanisms that support message delivery,
security, disconnected operation, directory services or filter functionality.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Chapter 3: Architectural Overview 9
The JavaMail Framework

This figure illustrates the JavaMail message-handling process.

FIGURE 3-3

MESSAGE
Send a MESSAGE
Message

Submit a Contains
TRANSPORT
Message Messages FOLDERS
FOLDERS

Network Receive a
Infrastructure STORE
Message

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10 Chapter 3: Architectural Overview
Major JavaMail API Components

Major JavaMail API Components

This section reviews major components comprising the JavaMail architecture.

The Message Class

The Message class is an abstract class that defines a set of attributes and a content for a mail
message. Attributes of the Message class specify addressing information and define the
structure of the content, including the content type. The content is represented as a
DataHandler object that wraps around the actual data.
The Message class implements the Part interface. The Part interface defines attributes
that are required to define and format data content carried by a Message object, and to
interface successfully to a mail system. The Message class adds From, To, Subject,
Reply-To, and other attributes necessary for message routing via a message transport
system. When contained in a folder, a Message object has a set of flags associated with it.
JavaMail provides Message subclasses that support specific messaging implementations.
The content of a message is a collection of bytes, or a reference to a collection of bytes,
encapsulated within a Message object. JavaMail has no knowledge of the data type or format
of the message content. A Message object interacts with its content through an intermediate
layer—the JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF). This separation allows a Message object
to handle any arbitrary content and to transmit it using any appropriate transmission protocol
by using calls to the same API methods. The message recipient usually knows the content data
type and format and knows how to handle that content.
The JavaMail API also supports multipart Message objects, where each Bodypart defines
its own set of attributes and content.

Message Storage and Retrieval

Messages are stored in Folder objects. A Folder object can contain subfolders as well as
messages, thus providing a tree-like folder hierarchy. The Folder class declares methods that
fetch, append, copy and delete messages. A Folder object can also send events to
components registered as event listeners.
The Store class defines a database that holds a folder hierarchy together with its messages.
The Store class also specifies the access protocol that accesses folders and retrieves
messages stored in folders. The Store class also provides methods to establish a connection
to the database, to fetch folders and to close a connection. Service providers implementing
Message Access protocols (IMAP4, POP3, etc.) start off by subclassing the Store class. A
user typically starts a session with the mail system by connecting to a particular Store
implementation.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Chapter 3: Architectural Overview 11
The JavaMail Event Model

Message Composition and Transport

A client creates a new message by instantiating an appropriate Message subclass. It sets
attributes like the recipient addresses and the subject, and inserts the content into the
Message object. Finally, it sends the Message by invoking the Transport.send
method.
The Transport class models the transport agent that routes a message to its destination
addresses. This class provides methods that send a message to a list of recipients. Invoking the
Transport.send method with a Message object identifies the appropriate transport based
on its destination addresses.

The Session Class

The Session class defines global and per-user mail-related properties that define the
interface between a mail-enabled client and the network. JavaMail system components use the
Session object to set and get specific properties. The Session class also provides a default
authenticated session object that desktop applications can share. The Session class is a final
concrete class. It cannot be subclassed.
The Session class also acts as a factory for Store and Transport objects that implement
specific access and transport protocols. By calling the appropriate factory method on a
Session object, the client can obtain Store and Transport objects that support specific
protocols.

The JavaMail Event Model

The JavaMail event model conforms to the JDK 1.1 event-model specification, as described in
the JavaBeans Specification. The JavaMail API follows the design patterns defined in the
JavaBeans Specification for naming events, event methods and event listener registration.
All events are subclassed from the MailEvent class. Clients listen for specific events by
registering themselves as listeners for those events. Events notify listeners of state changes as
a session progresses. During a session, a JavaMail component generates a specific event-type
to notify objects registered as listeners for that event-type. The JavaMail Store, Folder,
and Transport classes are event sources. This specification describes each specific event in
the section that describes the class that generates that event.

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12 Chapter 3: Architectural Overview
Using the JavaMail API

Using the JavaMail API

This section defines the syntax and lists the order in which a client application calls some
JavaMail methods in order to access and open a message located in a folder:
1. A JavaMail client typically begins a mail handling task by obtaining a JavaMail Session
object.
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, authenticator);
2. The client uses the Session object’s getStore method to connect to the default store.
The getStore method returns a Store object subclass that supports the access
protocol defined in the user properties object, which will typically contain per-user
preferences.
Store store = session.getStore();
store.connect();
3. If the connection is successful, the client can list available folders in the Store, and then
fetch and view specific Message objects.
// get the INBOX folder
Folder inbox = store.getFolder("INBOX");

// open the INBOX folder

inbox.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);

Message m = inbox.getMessage(1); // get Message # 1

String subject = m.getSubject(); // get Subject
Object content = m.getContent(); // get content
...
...
4. Finally, the client closes all open folders, and then closes the store.
inbox.close(); // Close the INBOX
store.close(); // Close the Store
See “Examples Using the JavaMail API” on page 63 for a more complete example.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 13

Chapter 4:

The Message Class

The Message class defines a set of attributes and a content for a mail message. Message
attributes specify message addressing information and define the structure of the content,
including the content type. The content is represented by a DataHandler object that wraps
around the actual data. The Message class is an abstract class that implements the Part
interface.
Subclasses of the Message classes can implement several standard message formats. For
example, the JavaMail API provides the MimeMessage class, that extends the Message
class to implement the RFC822 and MIME standards. Implementations can typically construct
themselves from byte streams and generate byte streams for transmission.
A Message subclass instantiates an object that holds message content, together with
attributes that specify addresses for the sender and recipients, structural information about the
message, and the content type of the message body. Messages placed into a folder also have a
set of flags that describe the state of the message within the folder.

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14 Chapter 4: The Message Class

The figure below illustrates the structure of the Message class.

FIGURE 4-1

Message Class
Part interface Header Attributes
Attributes defined by the
Part interface, including
Content-Type.

Attributes added by the

Message Class.

Optional attributes added by

a Message Subclass,
DataHandler such as MimeMessage.
Class

Content Body
DataHandler Object
Contains data that conforms
to the Content-Type attri-
JavaBean bute, together with methods
queries the that provide access to that
DataHandler data.
object in order to
view and handle
content body.

The Message object has no direct knowledge of the nature or semantics of its content. This
separation of structure from content allows the message object to contain any arbitrary content.
Message objects are either retrieved from a Folder object or constructed by instantiating a
new Message object of the appropriate subclass. Messages stored within a Folder object
are sequentially numbered, starting at one. An assigned message number can change when the
folder is expunged, since the expunge operation removes deleted messages from the folder and
also renumbers the remaining messages.
A Message object can contain multiple parts, where each part contains its own set of
attributes and content. The content of a multipart message is a Multipart object that
contains BodyPart objects representing each individual part. The Part interface defines the
structural and semantic similarity between the Message class and the BodyPart class.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Chapter 4: The Message Class 15

The figure below illustrates a Message instance hierarchy, where the message contains
attributes, a set of flags, and content. See “MimeMessage Object Hierarchy” on page 89 for an
illustration of the MimeMessage object hierarchy.

FIGURE 4-2

Part

Flags Message Attributes

Legend

Interface
Class
Content Contains
Implements
References

The Message class provides methods to perform the following tasks:

? Get, set and create its attributes and content:

public String getSubject() throws MessagingException;

public void setSubject(String subject)

throws MessagingException;

public String[] getHeader(String name)

throws MessagingException;

public void setHeader(String name, String value)

throws MessagingException;

public Object getContent()

throws MessagingException;

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16 Chapter 4: The Message Class
The Part Interface

public void setContent(Object content, String type)

throws MessagingException

? Save changes to its containing folder.

public void saveChanges()

throws MessagingException;

This method also ensures that the Message header fields are updated to be consistent with
the changed message contents.
? Generate a bytestream for the Message object.

public void writeTo(OutputStream os)

throws IOException, MessagingException;

This byte stream can be used to save the message or send it to a Transport object.

The Part Interface

The Part interface defines a set of standard headers common to most mail systems, specifies
the data-type assigned to data comprising a content block, and defines set and get methods for
each of these members. It is the basic data component in the JavaMail API and provides a
common interface for both the Message and BodyPart classes. See the JavaMail API
(Javadoc) documentation for details.

Note – A Message object can not be contained directly in a Multipart object, but must be
embedded in a BodyPart first.

Message Attributes
The Message class adds its own set of standard attributes to those it inherits from the Part
interface. These attributes include the sender and recipient addresses, the subject, flags, and
sent and received dates. The Message class also supports non-standard attributes in the form
of headers. See the JavaMail API (Javadoc) Documentation for the list of standard attributes
defined in the Message class. Not all messaging systems will support arbitrary headers, and
the availability and meaning of particular header names is specific to the messaging system
implementation.

The ContentType Attribute

The contentType attribute specifies the data type of the content, following the MIME
typing specification (RFC 2045). A MIME type is composed of a primary type that declares
the general type of the content, and a subtype that specifies a specific format for the content.
A MIME type also includes an optional set of type-specific parameters.

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 Chapter 4: The Message Class 17
The Part Interface

JavaMail API components can access content via these mechanisms:

As an input stream The Part interface declares the getInputStream method that
returns an input stream to the content. Note that Part implementations
must decode any mail-specific transfer encoding before providing the
input stream.

As a DataHandler object The Part interface declares the getDataHandler method that
returns a javax.activation.DataHandler object that wraps
around the content. The DataHandler object allows clients to
discover the operations available to perform on the content, and to
instantiate the appropriate component to perform those operations. See
“The JavaBeans Activation Framework” on page 41 for details
describing the data typing framework

As an object in the Java The Part interface declares the getContent method that returns the
programming language content as an object in the Java programming language. The type of the
returned object is dependent on the content’s data type. If the content is
of type multipart, the getContent method returns a Multipart
object, or a Multipart subclass object. The getContent method
returns an input stream for unknown content-types. Note that the
getContent method uses the DataHandler internally to obtain the
native form.

The setDataHandler(DataHandler) method specifies content for a new Part

object, as a step toward the construction of a new message. The Part also provides some
convenience methods to set up most common content types.
Part provides the writeTo method that writes its byte stream in mail-safe form suitable for
transmission. This byte stream is typically an aggregation of the Part attributes and the byte
stream for its content.

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18 Chapter 4: The Message Class
The Address Class

The Address Class

The Address class represents email addresses. The Address class is an abstract class.
Subclasses provide implementation-specific semantics.

The BodyPart Class

The BodyPart class is an abstract class that implements the Part interface in order to
define the attribute and content body definitions that Part declares. It does not declare
attributes that set From, To, Subject, ReplyTo, or other address header fields, as a
Message object does.
A BodyPart object is intended to be inserted into a Multipart container, later accessed
via a multipart message.

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 Chapter 4: The Message Class 19
The Multipart Class

The Multipart Class

The Multipart class implements multipart messages. A multipart message is a Message
object where the content-type specifier has been set to multipart. The Multipart class is a
container class that contains objects of type Bodypart. A Bodypart object is an
instantiation of the Part interface—it contains either a new Multipart container object, or
a DataHandler object.
The figure below illustrates the structure and content of a multipart message:

FIGURE 4-3

Message Multipart Object

Header Attributes Bodypart Object
Normal Message,
includes a Content- Header Attributes
Type attribute
set to ‘Multipart.’. Attributes defined by the Part
interface only.

Content Body Attributes include a second

Content-Type attribute.
Normal Message,
includes a Content
body of type
‘Multipart.’ Content Body
The content body itself can be
either a DataHandler object
A multipart message is a simple containing data, or another
message object where the Con- Multipart object.
tent-Type is set to ‘multipart,‘
and the Content Body carries a
reference to a Multipart
object.
Bodypart Object
A Multipart object is a con-
tainer of Bodypart objects, A Multipart Message can hold
where each Bodypart can con- more than one BodyPart object.
tain either a DataHandler
object, or another Multipart
object.

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20 Chapter 4: The Message Class
The Multipart Class

Note that Multipart objects can be nested to any reasonable depth within a multipart
message, in order to build an appropriate structure for data carried in DataHandler objects.
Therefore, it is important to check the ContentType header for each BodyPart element
stored within a Multipart container. The figure below illustrates a typical nested
Multipart message.

FIGURE 4-4

Message
Object

Carries
addresses for
the entire tree. Multipart Container
Object
Content body
references a Bodypart object
Multipart that carries a
container DataHandler
object holding data.

Bodypart object Other Optional

that holds a DataH- Multipart Objects
andler object hold-
ing a Multipart New bodyparts,
container object. containing a
Datahandler
Other Bodypart object.
objects. Bodypart

Bodypart

Bodypart

Typically, the client calls the getContentType method to get the content type of a
message. If getContentType returns a MIME-type whose primary type is multipart, then
the client calls getContent to get the Multipart container object.
The Multipart object supports several methods that get, create, and remove individual
BodyPart objects.

public int getCount() throws MessagingException;

public Body getBodyPart(int index)

throws MessagingException;

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 Chapter 4: The Message Class 21
The Multipart Class

public void addBodyPart(BodyPart part)

throws MessagingException;

public void removeBodyPart(BodyPart body)

throws MessagingException;

public void removeBodyPart(int index)

throws MessagingException;
The Multipart class implements the javax.beans.DataSource interface. It can act
as the DataSource object for javax.beans.DataHandler and
javax.beans.DataContentHandler objects. This allows message-aware content
handlers to handle multipart data sources more efficiently, since the data has already been
parsed into individual parts.
This diagram illustrates the structure of a multipart message, and shows calls from the
associated Message and Multipart objects, for a typical call sequence returning a
BodyPart containing text/plain content.

FIGURE 4-5

getContentType()
Message multipart/mixed

getContent() Legend
extends
Multipart
contains

getBodyPart(index)
0... n-1
getContentType()
BodyPart text/plain

getContent()

Text

In this figure, the ContentType attribute of a Message object indicates that it holds a
multipart content. Use the getContent method to obtain the Multipart object.

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22 Chapter 4: The Message Class
The Flags Class

This code sample below shows the retrieval of a Multipart object. See “Examples Using
the JavaMail API” on page 63 for examples that traverse a multipart message and examples
that create new multipart messages.

Multipart mp = (Multipart)message.getContent();

int count = mp.getCount();

BodyPart body_part;

for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)

body_part = mp.getBodyPart(i);

The Flags Class

Flags objects carry flag settings that describe the state of a Message object within its
containing folder. The Message.getFlags method returns a Flags object that holds all
the flags currently set for that message.
The setFlags(Flags f, boolean set) method sets the specified flags for that
message. The add(Flags.Flag f) method on a Flags object sets the specified flag; the
contains(Flags.Flag f) method returns whether the specified flag is set.

ANSWERED Clients set this flag to indicate that this message has been answered.

DRAFT Indicates that this message is a draft.

FLAGGED No defined semantics. Clients can use this flag to mark a message in some user-
defined manner.

RECENT This message is newly arrived in this folder. This flag is set when the message is
first delivered into the folder and cleared when the containing folder is closed.
Clients cannot set this flag.

SEEN Marks a message that has been opened. A client sets this flag implicitly when the
message contents are retrieved.

DELETED Allows undoable message deletion. Setting this flag for a message marks it
deleted but does not physically remove the message from its folder. The client
calls the expunge method on a folder to remove all deleted messages in that
folder.

Note that a folder is not guaranteed to support either standard system flags or arbitrary user
flags. The getPermanentFlags method in a folder returns a Flags object that contains
all the system flags supported by that Folder implementation. The presence of the special
USER flag indicates that the client can set arbitrary user-definable flags on any message
belonging to this folder.

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 Chapter 4: The Message Class 23
Message Creation And Transmission

Message Creation And Transmission

The Message class is abstract, so an appropriate subclass must be instantiated to create a new
Message object. A client creates a message by instantiating an appropriate Message
subclass.
For example, the MimeMessage subclass handles Internet email messages. Typically, the
client application creates an email message by instantiating a MimeMessage object, and
passing required attribute values to that object. In an email message, the client defines
Subject, From, and To attributes. The client then passes message content into the
MimeMessage object by using a suitably configured DataHandler object. See “Message
Composition” on page 45 for details.
After the Message object is constructed, the client calls the Transport.send method to
route it to its specified recipients. See “Transport Protocols and Mechanisms” on page 51 for a
discussion of the transport process.

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24 Chapter 4: The Message Class
Message Creation And Transmission

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 25

Chapter 5:

The Mail Session

A mail Session object manages the configuration options and user authentication
information used to interact with messaging systems.
The JavaMail API supports simultaneous multiple sessions. Each session can access multiple
message stores and transports. Any desktop application that needs to access the current
primary message store can share the default session. Typically the mail-enabled application
establishes the default session, which initializes the authentication information necessary to
access the user’s Inbox folder. Other desktop applications then use the default session when
sending or accessing mail on behalf of the user. When sharing the session object, all
applications share authentication information, properties, and the rest of the state of the object.
For example,
? To create a Session using a static factory method:
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, authenticator);
? To create the default shared session, or to access the default shared session:
Session defaultSession =
Session.getDefaultInstance(props, authenticator);
The Properties object that initializes the Session contains default values and other
configuration information. It is expected that clients using the APIs set the values for the listed
properties, especially mail.host, mail.user, and mail.from, since the defaults are
unlikely to work in all cases. See “Environment Properties” on page 61 for a list of properties
used by the JavaMail APIs and their defaults.
Some messaging system implementations can use additional properties. Typically the
properties object contains user-defined customizations in addition to system-wide defaults.
Mail-enabled application logic determines the appropriate set of properties. Lacking a specific
requirement, the application can use the system properties object retrieved from the
System.getProperties method.
The Authenticator object controls security aspects for the Session object. The
messaging system uses it as a callback mechanism to interact with the user when a password
is required to login to a messaging system. It indirectly controls access to the default session,
as described below.
Clients using JavaMail can register PasswordAuthentication objects with the
Session object for use later in the session or for use by other users of the same session.
Because PasswordAuthentication objects contain passwords, access to this information

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26 Chapter 5: The Mail Session
The Provider Registry

must be carefully controlled. Applications that create Session objects must restrict access to
those objects appropriately. In addition, the Session class shares some responsibility for
controlling access to the default session object.
The first call to the getDefaultInstance method creates a new Session object and
associates it with the Authenticator object. Subsequent calls to the
getDefaultInstance method compare the Authenticator object passed in with the
Authenticator object saved in the default session. Access to the default session is allowed
if both objects have been loaded by the same class loader. Typically, this is the case when both
the default session creator and the program requesting default session access are in the same
"security domain." Also, if both objects are null, access is allowed. Using null to gain
access is discouraged, because this allows access to the default session from any security
domain.
A mail-enabled client uses the Session object to retrieve a Store or Transport object in
order to read or send mail. Typically, the client retrieves the default Store or Transport
object based on properties loaded for that session:
Store store = session.getStore();
The client can override the session defaults and access a Store or Transport object that
implements a particular protocol.
Store store = session.getStore("imap");
See “The Provider Registry” on page 26 for details.
Implementations of Store and Transport objects will be told the session to which they
have been assigned. They can then make the Session object available to other objects
contained within this Store or Transport objects using application-dependent logic.

The Provider Registry

The Provider Registry allows providers to register their protocol implementations to be used
by JavaMail APIs. It provides a mechanism for discovering available protocol, for registering
new protocols, and for specifying default implementations.

Resource Files
The providers for JavaMail APIs are configured using the following files:
? javamail.providers and javamail.default.providers
? javamail.address.map and javamail.default.address.map
Each javamail.X resource file is searched in the following order:
1. java.home/lib/javamail.X
2. META-INF/javamail.X
3. META-INF/javamail.default.X

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 Chapter 5: The Mail Session 27
The Provider Registry

The first method allows the user to include their own version of the resource file by placing it
in the lib directory where the java.home property points. The second method allows an
application that uses the JavaMail APIs to include their own resource files in their
application’s or jar file’s META-INF directory. The javamail.default.X default files are
part of the JavaMail mail.jar file.
File location depends upon how the ClassLoader.getResource method is implemented.
Usually, the getResource method searches through CLASSPATH until it finds the requested
file and then stops. JDK 1.2 and newer allows all resources of a given name to be loaded from
all elements of the CLASSPATH. However, this only affects method two, above; method one
is loaded from a specific location (if allowed by the SecurityManager) and method three
uses a different name to ensure that the default resource file is always loaded successfully.
The ordering of entries in the resource files matters. If multiple entries exist, the first entries
take precedence over the latter entries as the initial defaults. For example, the first IMAP
provider found will be set as the default IMAP implementation until explicitly changed by the
application.
The user- or system-supplied resource files augment, they do not override, the default files
included with the JavaMail APIs. This means that all entries in all files loaded will be
available.

javamail.providers and
javamail.default.providers
These resource files specify the stores and transports that are available on the system, allowing
an application to "discover" what store and transport implementations are available. The
protocol implementations are listed one per line. The file format defines four attributes that
describe a protocol implementation. Each attribute is an "="-separated name-value pair with
the name in lowercase. Each name-value pair is semi-colon (";") separated.

TABLE 5-1 Protocol Attributes

Name Description

protocol Name assigned to protocol. For example, ’smtp’ for Transport.

type Valid entries are “store” and “transport”.

class Class name that implements this protocol.

vendor Optional string identifying the vendor.

version Optional string identifying the version.

Here’s an example of META-INF/javamail.default.providers file contents:

protocol=imap; type=store; class=com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPStore; vendor=Sun;

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28 Chapter 5: The Mail Session
The Provider Registry

protocol=smtp; type=transport; class=com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport;

javamail.address.map and
javamail.default.address.map
These resource files map transport address types to the transport protocol. The
javax.mail.Address.getType() method returns the address type. The
javamail.address.map file maps the transport type to the protocol. The file format is a
series of name-value pairs. Each key name should correspond to an address type that is
currently installed on the system; there should also be an entry for each
javax.mail.Address implementation that is present if it is to be used. For example,
javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress.getType() returns rfc822. Each
referenced protocol should be installed on the system. For the case of news, below, the client
should install a Transport provider supporting the nntp protocol.
Here are the typical contents of a javamail.address.map file.

rfc822=smtp
news=nntp

Provider
Provider is a class that describes a protocol implementation. The values come from the
javamail.providers and javamail.default.providers resource files.

Protocol Selection and Defaults

The constructor for the Session object initializes the appropriate variables from the resource
files. The order of the protocols in the resource files determines the initial defaults for protocol
implementations. The methods, getProviders(), {getProvider()and
setProvider() allow the client to discover the available (installed) protocol
implementations, and to set the protocols to be used by default.
At runtime, an application may set the default implementation for a particular protocol. It can
set the mail.protocol.class property when it creates the Session object. This property
specifies the class to use for a particular protocol. The getProvider() method consults this
property first.
The code can also call setProviders() passing in a Provider that was returned by the
discovery methods. A Provider object in not normally explicitly created; it is usually retrieved
using the getProviders() method.
In either case, the provider specified is one of the ones configured in the resource files. An
application may also instantiate a Provider object to configure a new implementation.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Chapter 5: The Mail Session 29
The Provider Registry

Example Scenarios
Scenario 1: The client application invokes the default protocols:
class Application1 {
init() {
// application properties include the JavaMail
// required properties: mail.store.protocol,
// mail.transport.protocol, mail.host, mail.user
Properties props = loadApplicationProps();
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

// get the store implementation of the protocol

// defined in mail.store.protocol; the implementation
// returned will be defined by the order of entries in
// javamail.providers & javamail.default.providers
try {
Store store = session.getStore();
store.connect();
} catch (MessagingException mex) {}
...
}
}
Scenario 2: The client application presents available implementations to the user and then sets
the user’s choice as the default implementation:
class Application2 {
init() {
// application properties include the JavaMail
// properties: mail.store.protocol,
// mail.transport.protocol, mail.host, mail.user
Properties props = loadApplicationProps();
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

// find out which implementations are available

Provider[] providers = session.getProviders();

// ask the user which implementations to use

// user’s response may include a number of choices,
// i.e. imap & nntp store providers & smtp transport
Provider[] userChosenProviders =
askUserWhichProvidersToUse(providers);

// set the defaults based on users response

for (int i = 0; i < userChosenProviders.length; i++)
session.setProvider(userChosenProviders[i]);
// get the store implementation of the protocol
// defined in mail.store.protocol; the implementation
// returned will be the one configured previously
try {
Store store = session.getStore();
store.connect();

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30 Chapter 5: The Mail Session
Managing Security

} catch (MessagingException mex) {}

...
}
}
Scenario 3: Application wants to specify an implementation for a given protocol:
class Application3 {
init() {
// application properties include the JavaMail
// required properties: mail.store.protocol,
// mail.transport.protocol, mail.host, mail.user
Properties props = loadApplicationProps();

// hard-code an implementation to use

// "com.acme.SMTPTRANSPORT"

props.put("mail.smtp.class", "com.acme.SMTPTRANSPORT");
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

// get the smtp transport implementation; the

// implementation returned will be com.acme.SMTPTRANSPORT
// if it was correctly configured in the resource files.
// If com.acme.SMTPTRANSPORT can’t be loaded, a
// MessagingException is thrown.
try {
Transport transport = session.getTransport("smtp");
} catch (MessagingException mex) {
quit();
}
}
...
}

Managing Security
The Session class allows messaging system implementations to use the Authenticator
object that was registered when the session was created. The Authenticator object is
created by the application and allows interaction with the user to obtain a user name and
password. The user name and password is returned in a PasswordAuthentication
object. The messaging system implementation can ask the session to associate a user name and
password with a particular message store using the setPasswordAuthentication
method. This information is retrieved using the getPasswordAuthentication method.
This avoids the need to ask the user for a password when reconnecting to a Store that has
disconnected, or when a second application sharing the same session needs to create its own
connection to the same Store.
Messaging system implementations can register PasswordAuthentication objects with
the Session object for use later in the session or for use by other users of the same session.
Because PasswordAuthentication objects contain passwords, access to this information

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 Chapter 5: The Mail Session 31
Store and Folder URLs

must be carefully controlled. Applications that create Session objects must restrict access to
those objects appropriately. In addition, the Session class shares some responsibility for
controlling access to the default Session object.
The first call to getDefaultInstance creates a new Session object and associates the
Authenticator object with the Session object. Later calls to getDefaultInstance
compare the Authenticator object passed in, to the Authenticator object saved in the
default session. If both objects have been loaded by the same class loader, then
getDefaultInstance will allow access to the default session. Typically, this is the case
when both the creator of the default session and the code requesting access to the default
session are in the same "security domain." Also, if both objects are null, access is allowed.
This last case is discouraged because setting objects to null allows access to the default
session from any security domain.
In the future, JDK security Permissions could control access to the default session. Note that
the Authenticator and PasswordAuthentication classes and their use in JavaMail
is similar to the classes with the same names provided in the java.net package in the JDK.
As new authentication mechanisms are added to the system, new methods can be added to the
Authenticator class to request the needed information. The default implementations of
these new methods will fail, but new clients that understand these new authentication
mechanisms can provide implementations of these methods. New classes other than
PasswordAuthentication could be needed to contain the new authentication
information, and new methods could be needed in the Session class to store such
information. JavaMail design evolution will be patterned after the corresponding JDK classes.

Store and Folder URLs

To simplify message folder naming and to minimize the need to manage Store and
Transport objects, folders can be named using URLNames. URLNames are similar to
URLs except they only include the parsing of the URL string. The Session class provides
methods to retrieve a Folder object given a URLName:

Folder f = session.getFolder(URLName);
or

Store s = session.getStore(URLName);

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32 Chapter 5: The Mail Session
Store and Folder URLs

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 33

Chapter 6:

Message Storage And Retrieval

This section describes JavaMail message storage facilities supported by the Store and
Folder classes.
Messages are contained in Folders. New messages are usually delivered to folders by a
transport protocol or a delivery agent. Clients retrieve messages from folders using an access
protocol.

The Store Class

The Store class defines a database that holds a Folder hierarchy and the messages within.
The Store also defines the access protocol used to access folders and retrieve messages from
folders. Store is an abstract class. Subclasses implement specific message databases and
access protocols.
Clients gain access to a Message Store by obtaining a Store object that implements the
database access protocol. Most message stores require the user to be authenticated before they
allow access. The connect method performs that authentication.
For many message stores, a host name, user name, and password are sufficient to authenticate
a user. The JavaMail API provides a connect method that takes this information as input
parameters. Store also provides a default connect method. In either case, the client can
obtain missing information from the Session object’s properties, or by interacting with the
user by accessing the Session’s Authenticator object.
The default implementation of the connect method in the Store class uses these techniques
to retrieve all needed information and then calls the protocolConnect method. The
messaging system must provide an appropriate implementation of this method. The messaging
system can also choose to directly override the connect method.
By default, Store queries the following properties for the user name and host name:
? mail.user property, or user.name system property (if mail.user is not set)
? mail.host
These global defaults can be overridden on a per-protocol basis by the properties:
? mail.protocol.user
? mail.protocol.host
Note that passwords can not be specified using properties.

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34 Chapter 6: Message Storage And Retrieval
The Folder Class

The Store presents a default namespace to clients. Store implementations can also present
other namespaces. The getDefaultFolder method on Store returns the root folder for
the default namespace.
Clients terminate a session by calling the close method on the Store object. Once a Store
is closed (either explicitly using the close method; or externally, if the Mail server fails), all
Messaging components belonging to that Store become invalid. Typically, clients will try to
recover from an unexpected termination by calling connect to reconnect to the Store
object, and then fetching new Folder objects and new Message objects.

Store Events
Store sends the following events to interested listeners:

ConnectionEvent Generated when a connection is successfully made to the Store, or when

an existing connection is terminated or disconnected.

StoreEvent Communicates alerts and notification messages from the Store to the end
user. The getMessageType method returns the event type, which can be
one of: ALERT or NOTICE. The client must display ALERT events in some
fashion that calls the user’s attention to the message.

FolderEvent Communicates changes to any folder contained within the Store. These
changes include creation of a new Folder, deletion of an existing Folder,
and renaming of an existing Folder.

The Folder Class

The Folder class represents a folder containing messages. Folders can contain subfolders as
well as messages, thus providing a hierarchical structure. The getType method returns
whether a Folder can hold subfolders, messages, or both. Folder is an abstract class.
Subclasses implement protocol-specific Message Folders.
The getDefaultFolder method for the corresponding Store object returns the root
folder of a user’s default folder hierarchy. The list method for a Folder returns all the
subfolders under that folder. The getFolder(String name) method for a Folder
object returns the named subfolder. Note that this subfolder need not exist physically in the
store. The exists method in a folder indicates whether this folder exists. A folder is created
in the store by invoking its create method.
A closed Folder object allows certain operations, including deleting the folder, renaming the
folder, listing subfolders, creating subfolders and monitoring for new messages. The open
method opens a Folder object. All Folder methods except open, delete, and
renameTo are valid on an open Folder object. Note that the open method is applicable
only on Folder objects that can contain messages.

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 Chapter 6: Message Storage And Retrieval 35
The Folder Class

The messages within a Folder are sequentially numbered, from 1 through the total number
of messages. This ordering is referred to as the “mailbox order” and is usually based on the
arrival time of the messages in the folder. As each new message arrives into a folder, it is
assigned a sequence number that is one higher than the previous number of messages in that
folder. The getMessageNumber method on a Message object returns its sequence
number.
The sequence number assigned to a Message object is valid within a session, but only as long
as it retains its relative position within the Folder. Any change in message ordering can
change the Message object's sequence number. Currently this occurs when the client calls
expunge to remove deleted messages and renumber messages remaining in the folder.
A client can reference a message stored within a Folder either by its sequence number, or by
the corresponding Message object itself. Since a sequence number can change within a
session, it is preferable to use Message objects rather than sequence numbers as cached
references to messages. Clients extending JavaMail are expected to provide light-weight
Message objects that get filled ’on-demand’, so that calling the getMessages method on
a Folder object is an inexpensive operation, both in terms of CPU cycles and memory. For
instance, an IMAP implementation could return Message objects that contain only the
corresponding IMAP UIDs.

The FetchProfile Method

The Message objects returned by a Folder object are expected to be light-weight objects.
Invoking getxxx methods on a Message cause the corresponding data items to be loaded
into the object on demand. Certain Store implementations support batch fetching of data
items for a range of Messages. Clients can use such optimizations, for example, when filling
the header-list window for a range of messages. The FetchProfile method allows a client
to list the items it will fetch in a batch for a certain message range.
The following code illustrates the use of FetchProfile when fetching Messages from a
Folder. The client fills its header-list window with the Subject, From, and X-mailer
headers for all messages in the folder.

Message[] msgs = folder.getMessages();

FetchProfile fp = new FetchProfile();
fp.add(FetchProfile.Item.ENVELOPE);
fp.add("X-mailer");
folder.fetch(msgs, fp);
for (int i = 0; i < folder.getMessageCount(); i++) {
display(msgs[i].getFrom());
display(msgs[i].getSubject());
display(msgs[i].getHeader("X-mailer"));
}

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The Folder Class

Folder Events
Folders generate events to notify listeners of any change in either the folder or in its Messages
list. The client can register listeners to a closed Folder, but generates a notification event
only after that folder is opened.
Folder supports the following events:

ConnectionEvent This event is generated when a Folder is opened or closed.

When a Folder closes (either because the client has called close or from
some external cause), all Messaging components belonging to that Folder
become invalid. Typically, clients will attempt to recover by reopening that
Folder, and then fetching Message objects.

FolderEvent This event is generated when the client creates, deletes or renames this folder.
Note that the Store object containing this folder can also generate this
event.

MessageCountEvent This event notifies listeners that the message count has changed. The
following actions can cause this change:
? Addition of new Messages into the Folder, either by a delivery
agent or because of an append operation. The new Message
objects are included in the event.
? Removal of existing messages from this Folder. Removed
messages are referred to as expunged messages. The
isExpunged method returns true for removed Messages and the
getMessageNumber method returns the original sequence
number assigned to that message. All other Message methods
throw a MessageRemovedException. See “The Folder
Class” on page 34 for a discussion of removing deleted messages
in shared folders. The expunged Message objects are included
in the event. An expunged message is invalid and should be
pruned from the client's view as early as possible. See “The
Expunge Process” on page 37 for details on the expunge
method.

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 Chapter 6: Message Storage And Retrieval 37
The Folder Class

The Expunge Process

Deleting messages from a Folder is a two-phase operation. Setting the DELETED flag on
messages marks them as deleted, but it does not remove them from the Folder. The deleted
messages are removed only when the client invokes the expunge method on that Folder
pbject. The Folder object then notifies listeners by firing an appropriate MessageEvent.
The MessageEvent object contains the expunged Message objects. Note that the
expunge method also returns the expunged Message objects. The Folder object also
renumbers the messages falling after the expunged messages in the message list. Thus, when
the expunge method returns, the sequence number of those Message objects will change.
Note, however, that the expunged messages still retain their original sequence numbers.
Since expunging a folder can remove some messages from the folder and renumber others, it
is important that the client synchronize itself with the expunged folder as early as possible.
The next sections describe a set of recommendations for clients wanting to expunge a
Folder:
? Expunge the folder; close it; and then reopen and refetch messages from that Folder. This
ensures that the client was notified of the updated folder state. In fact, the client can just
issue the close method with the expunge parameter set to true to force an expunge of
the Folder during the close operation, thus even avoiding the explicit call to expunge.
? The previous solution might prove to be too simple or too drastic in some circumstances.
This paragraph describes the scenario of a more complex client expunging a single access
folder; for example, a folder that allows only one read-write connection at a time. The
recommended steps for such a client after it issues the expunge command on the folder
are:
? Update its message count, either by decrementing it by the number of expunged
messages, or by invoking the getMessageCount method on the Folder.
? If the client uses sequence numbers to reference messages, it must account for the
renumbering of Message objects subsequent to the expunged messages. Thus if a
folder has 5 messages as shown below, (sequence numbers are within parenthesis),
and if the client is notified that messages A and C are removed, it should account for
the renumbering of the remaining messages as shown in the second figure.

FIGURE 6-1

A (1) B (2) C (3) D (4) E (5)

B (1) D (2) E (3)

? The client should prune expunged messages from its internal storage as early as possible.

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38 Chapter 6: Message Storage And Retrieval
The Folder Class

? The expunge process becomes complex when dealing with a shared folder that can be
edited. Consider the case where two clients are operating on the same folder. Each client
possesses its own Folder object, but each Folder object actually represents the same
physical folder.
If one client expunges the shared folder, any deleted messages are physically removed from
the folder. The primary client can probably deal with this appropriately since it initiated this
process and is ready to handle the consequences. However, secondary clients are not
guaranteed to be in a state where they can handle an unexpected Message removed event—
especially if the client is heavily multithreaded or if it uses sequence numbers.
To allow clients to handle such situations gracefully, the JavaMail API applies following
restrictions to Folder implementations:
? A Folder can remove and renumber its Messages only when it is explicitly expunged
using the expunge method. When the folder is implicitly expunged, it marks any
expunged messages as expunged, but it still maintains access to those Message objects.
This means that the following state is maintained when the Folder is implicitly expunged:
? getMessages returns expunged Message objects together with valid message
objects. However; an expunged message can throw the
MessageExpungedException if direct access is attempted.
? The messages in the Folder should not be renumbered.
? The implicit expunge operation can not change the total Folder message count.
A Folder can notify listeners of “implicit” expunges by generating appropriate
MessageEvents. However, the removed field in the event must be set to false to indicate
that the message is still in the folder. When this Folder is explicitly expunged, then the
Folder must remove all expunged messages, renumber it's internal Message cache, and
generate MessageEvents for all the expunged messages, with each removed flag set to true.
The recommended set of actions for a client under the above situation is as follows:
? Multithreaded clients that expect to handle shared folders are advised not to use sequence
numbers.
? If a client receives a MessageEvent indicating message removal, it should check the
removed flag. If the flag is false, this indicates that another client has removed the
message from this folder. This client might want to issue an expunge request on the
folder object to synchronize it with the physical folder (but note the caveats in the
previous section about using a shared folder). Alternatively, this client might want to close
the Folder object (without expunging) and reopen it to synchronize with the physical
folder (but note that all message objects would need to be refreshed in this case). The
client may also mark the expunged messages in order to notify the end user.
? If the removed flag was set to true, the client should follow earlier recommendations on
dealing with explicit expunges.

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 Chapter 6: Message Storage And Retrieval 39
The Search Process

The Search Process

Search criteria are expressed as a tree of search-terms, forming a parse tree for the search
expression. The SearchTerm class represents search terms. This is an abstract class with a
single method:

public boolean match(Message msg);

Subclasses implement specific matching algorithms by implementing the match method.
Thus new search terms and algorithms can be easily introduced into the search framework by
writing the required code using the Java programming language.
The search package provides a set of standard search terms that implement specific match
criteria on Message objects. For example, SubjectTerm pattern-matches the given
String with the subject header of the given message.

public final class SubjectTerm extends StringTerm {

public SubjectTerm(String pattern);
public boolean match(Message m);
}

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The Search Process

The search package also provides a set of standard logical operator terms that can be used to
compose complex search terms. These include AndTerm, OrTerm and NotTerm.

final class AndTerm extends SearchTerm {

public AndTerm(SearchTerm t1, SearchTerm t2);
public boolean match(Message msg) {
// The AND operator
for (int i=0; i < terms.length; i++)
if (!terms[i].match(msg))
return false;
return true;
}
}

The Folder class supports searches on messages through these search method versions:

public Message[] search(SearchTerm term)

public Message[] search(SearchTerm term, Message[] msgs)

These methods return the Message objects matching the specified search term. The default
implementation applies the search term on each Message object in the specified range. Other
implementations may optimize this; for example, the IMAP Folder implementation maps the
search term into an IMAP SEARCH command that the server executes.

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Chapter 7:

The JavaBeans Activation Framework

JavaMail relies heavily on the JavaBeans Activation Framework (JAF) to determine the MIME
data type, to determine the commands available on that data, and to provide a software
component corresponding to a particular behavior. The JAF specification is part of the
"Glasgow" JavaBeans specification. More details can be obtained from http://
java.sun.com/beans/glasgow/jaf.html
This section explains how the JavaMail and JAF APIs work together to manage message
content. It describes how clients using JavaMail can access and operate on the content of
Messages and BodyParts. This discussion assumes you are familiar with the JAF
specification posted at http://java.sun.com.

Accessing the Content

For a client using JavaMail, arbitrary data is introduced to the system in the form of mail
messages. The javax.mail.Part interface allows the client to access the content. Part
consists of a set of attributes and a "content". The Part interface is the common base
interface for Messages and BodyParts. A typical mail message has one or more body parts,
each of a particular MIME type.
Anything that deals with the content of a Part will use the Part’s DataHandler. The
content is available through the DataHandlers either as an InputStream or as an object
in the Java programming language. The Part also defines convenience methods that call
through to the DataHandler. For example: the Part.getContent method is the same as
calling Part.getDataHandler().getContent() and the Part.getInputStream
method is the same as Part.getDataHandler().getInputStream().
The content returned (either via an InputStream or an object in the Java programmin
language) depends on the MIME type. For example: a Part that contains textual content
returns the following:
? The Part.getContentType method returns text/plain
? The Part.getInputStream method returns an InputStream containing the bytes
of the text
? The Part.getContent method returns a java.lang.String object

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Accessing the Content

Content is returned either as an input stream, or as an object in the Java programming

language.
? When an InputStream is returned, any mail-specific encodings are decoded before the
stream is returned.
? When an object in the Java programming language is returned using the getContent
method, the type of the returned object depends upon the content itself. In the JavaMail
API, any Part with a main content type set to “multipart/” (any kind of multipart)
should return a javax.mail.Multipart object from the getContent method. A
Part with a content type of message/rfc822 returns a javax.mail.Message
object from the getContent method.

Example: Message Output

This example shows how you can traverse Parts and display the data contained in a message.
public void printParts(Part p) {
Object o = p.getContent();
if (o instanceof String) {
System.out.println("This is a String");
System.out.println((String)o);
} else if (o instanceof Multipart) {
System.out.println("This is a Multipart");
Multipart mp = (Multipart)o;
int count = mp.getCount();
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
printParts(mp.getBodyPart(i));
}
} else if (o instanceof InputStream) {
System.out.println("This is just an input stream");
InputStream is = (InputStream)o;
int c;
while ((c = is.read()) != -1)
System.out.write(c);
}
}

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 Chapter 7: The JavaBeans Activation Framework 43
Operating on the Content

Operating on the Content

The DataHandler allows clients to discover the operations available on the content of a
Message, and to instantiate the appropriate JavaBeans to perform those operations. The most
common operations on Message content are view, edit and print.

Example: Viewing a Message

Consider a Message “Viewer” Bean that presents a user interface that displays a mail message.
This example shows how a viewer bean can be used to display the content of a message (that
usually is text/plain, text/html, or multipart/mixed).

Note – Perform error checking to ensure that a valid Component was created.

// message passed in as parameter

void setMessage(Message msg) {
DataHandler dh = msg.getDataHandler();
CommandInfo cinfo = dh.getCommand("view");
Component comp = (Component) dh.getBean(cinfo);
this.setMainViewer(comp);
}

Example: Showing Attachments

In this example, the user has selected an attachment and wishes to display it in a separate
dialog. The client locates the correct viewer object as follows.

// Retrieve the BodyPart from the current attachment

BodyPart bp = getSelectedAttachment();

DataHandler dh = bp.getDataHandler();
CommandInfo cinfo = dh.getCommand("view");
Component comp = (Component) dh.getBean(cinfo);

// Add viewer to dialog Panel

MyDialog myDialog = new MyDialog();
myDialog.add(comp);

// display dialog on screen

myDialog.show();

See “Setting Message Content” on page 47 for examples that construct a message for a send
operation.

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Adding Support for Content Types

Adding Support for Content Types

Support for commands acting on message data is an implementation task left to the client.
JavaMail and JAF APIs intend for this support to be provided by a JAF-Aware JavaBean.
Almost all data will require edit and view support.
Currently, the JavaMail API does not provide viewer JavaBeans. The JAF does provide two
very simple JAF-aware viewer beans: A Text Viewer and Image Viewer. These beans handle
data where content-type has been set to text/plain or image/gif.
Developers writing a JavaMail client need to write additional viewers that support some of the
basic content types-- specifically message/rfc822, multipart/mixed, and text/
plain. These are the usual content-types encountered when displaying a Message, and they
provide the look and feel of the application.
Content developers providing additional data types should refer to the JAF specification, that
discusses how to create DataContentHandlers and Beans that operate on those contents.

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 45

Chapter 8:

Message Composition
This section describes the process used to instantiate a message object, add content to that
message, and send it to its intended list of recipients.
The JavaMail API allows a client program to create a message of arbitrary complexity.
Messages are instantiated from the Message subclass. The client program can manipulate any
message as if it had been retrieved from a Store.

Building a Message Object

To create a message, a client program instantiates a Message object, sets appropriate
attributes, and then inserts the content.
? The attributes specify the message address and other values necessary to send, route,
receive, decode and store the message. Attributes also specify the message structure and
data content type.
? Message content is carried in a DataHandler object, that carries either data or a
Multipart object. A DataHandler carries the content body and provides methods
the client uses to handle the content. A Multipart object is a container that contains
one or more Bodypart objects, each of which can in turn contain DataHandler
objects.

Message Creation
javax.mail.Message is an abstract class that implements the Part interface. Therefore,
to create a message object, select a message subclass that implements the appropriate message
type.
For example, to create a Mime message, a JavaMail client instantiates an empty
javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage object passing the current Session object to
it:

Message msg = new MimeMessage(session);

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Setting Message Attributes

Setting Message Attributes

The Message class provides a set of methods that specify standard attributes common to all
messages. The MimeMessage class provides additional methods that set MIME-specific
attributes. The client program can also set non-standard attributes (custom headers) as name-
value pairs.
The methods for setting standard attributes are listed below:

public class Message {

public void setFrom(Address addr);
public void setFrom(); // retrieves from system
public void setRecipients(RecipientType type, Address[] addrs);
public void setReplyTo(Address[] addrs);
public void setSentDate(Date date);
public void setSubject(String subject);
...
}

The Part interface specifies the following method, that sets custom headers:

public void setHeader(String name, String value)

The setRecipients method takes a RecipientType as its first parameter, which
specifies which recipient field to use. Currently, Message.RecipientType.TO,
Message.RecipientType.CC, and Message.RecipientType.BCC are defined.
Additional RecipientTypes may be defined as necessary.
The Message class provides two versions of the of the setFrom method:
? setFrom(Address addr) specifies the sender explicitly from an Address object
parameter.
? setFrom() retrieves the sender’s username from the local system.
The code sample below sets attributes for the MimeMessage just created. First, it instantiates
Address objects to be used as To and From addresses. Then, it calls set methods, which
equate those addresses to appropriate message attributes:

toAddrs[] = new InternetAddress[1];

toAddrs[0] = new InternetAddress("[email protected]");
Address fromAddr =
new InternetAddress("[email protected]");

msg.setFrom(fromAddr);
msg.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO, toAddrs);
msg.setSubject("Takeoff time.");
msg.setSentDate(new Date());

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 Chapter 8: Message Composition 47
Setting Message Content

Setting Message Content

The Message object carries content data within a DataHandler object. To add content to a
Message, a client creates content, instantiates a DataHandler object, places content into
that DataHandler object, and places that object into a Message object that has had its
attributes defined.
The JavaMail API provides two techniques that set message content. The first technique uses
the setDataHandler method. The second technique uses the setContent method.
Typically, clients add content to a DataHandler object by calling
setDataHandler(DataHandler) on a Message object. The DataHandler is an
object that encapsulates data. The data is passed to the DataHandler's constructor as either
a DataSource (a stream connected to the data) or as an object in the Java programming
language. The InputStream object creates the DataSource. See “The JavaBeans
Activation Framework” on page 41 for additional information.

public class DataHandler {

DataHandler(DataSource dataSource);
DataHandler(Object data, String mimeType);
}
The code sample below shows how to place text content into an InternetMessage. First, create
the text as a string object. Then, pass the string into a DataHandler object, together with its
MIME type. Finally, add the DataHandler object to the message object:
// create brief message text
String content = "Leave at 300.";

// instantiate the DataHandler object

DataHandler data = new DataHandler(content, "text/plain");

// Use setDataHandler() to insert data into the

// new Message object

msg.setDataHandler(data);
Alternately, setContent implements a simpler technique that takes the data object and its
MIME type. setContent creates the DataHandler object automatically:

// create the message text

String content = "Leave at 300.";

// call setContent to pass content and content type

// together into the message object

msg.setContent(content, "text/plain");

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Building a MIME Multipart Message

When the client calls Transport.send()to send this message, the recipient will receive
the message below, using either technique:
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 22:38:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: [email protected]
Subject: Takeoff time
To: [email protected]

Leave at 300.

Building a MIME Multipart Message

Follow these steps to create a MIME Multipart Message:
1. Instantiate a new MimeMultipart object, or a subclass.
2. Create MimeBodyParts for the specific message parts. Use the setContent method
or the setDataHandler method to create the content for each Bodypart, as
described in the previous section.

Note – The default subtype for a MimeMultipart object is mixed. It can be set to other
subtypes as required. MimeMultipart subclasses might already have their subtype set
appropriately.

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 Chapter 8: Message Composition 49
Building a MIME Multipart Message

3. Insert the Multipart object into the Message object by calling

setContent(Multipart) within a newly-constructed Message object.

The example below creates a Multipart object and then adds two message parts to it.
The first message part is a text string, “Spaceport Map,” and the second contains a
document of type “application/postscript.” Finally, this multipart object is added to a
MimeMessage object of the type described above.

// Instantiate a Multipart object

MimeMultipart mp = new MimeMultipart();

// create the first bodypart object

MimeBodyPart b1 = new MimeBodyPart();

// create textual content

// and add it to the bodypart object
b1.setContent("Spaceport Map","text/plain");
mp.addBodyPart(b1);

// Multipart messages usually have more than

// one body part. Create a second body part
// object, add new text to it, and place it
// into the multipart message as well. This
// second object holds postscript data.

MimeBodyPart b2 = new MimeBodyPart(); b2.setContent(map,"application/

postscript");
mp.addBodyPart(b2);

// Create a new message object as described above,

// and set its attributes. Add the multipart
// object to this message and call saveChanges()
// to write other message headers automatically.

Message msg = new MimeMessage(session);

// Set message attrubutes as in a singlepart

// message.

msg.setContent(mp); // add Multipart

msg.saveChanges(); // save changes

After all message parts are created and inserted, call the saveChanges method to ensure that
the client writes appropriate message headers. This is identical to the process followed with a
single part message. Note that the JavaMail API calls the saveChanges method implicitly
during the send process, so invoking it is unnecessary and expensive if the message is to be
sent immediately.

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Building a MIME Multipart Message

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 51

Chapter 9:

Transport Protocols and Mechanisms

The Transport abstract class defines the message submission and transport protocol.
Subclasses of the Transport class implement SMTP and other transport protocols.

Obtaining the Transport Object

The Transport object is seldom explicitly created. The getTransport method obtains a
Transport object from the Session factory. The JavaMail API provides three versions of
the getTransport method:

public class Session {

public Transport getTransport(Address address);
public Transport getTransport(String protocol);
public Transport getTransport();
}
? getTransport(Address address) returns the implementation of the transport
class based on the address type. A user-extensible map defines which transport type to use
for a particular address. For example, if the address is an InternetAddress, and
InternetAddress is mapped to a protocol that supports SMTP then
SMTPTransport can be returned.
? The client can also call getTransport(“smtp”) to request SMTP, or another
transport implementation protocol.
? getTransport() returns the transport specified in the
mail.transport.protocol property.
See “The Mail Session” on page 25 for details.

Transport Methods
The Transport class provides the connect and protocolConnect methods, which
operate similarly to those on the Store class. See “The Store Class” on page 33 for details.
A Transport object generates a ConnectionEvent to notify its listeners of a successful
or a failed connection. A Transport object can throw an IOException if the connection
fails.

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52 Chapter 9: Transport Protocols and Mechanisms
Transport Events

Transport implementations should ensure that the message specified is of a known type. If the
type is known, then the Transport object sends the message to its specified destinations. If
the type is not known, then the Transport object can attempt to reformat the Message
object into a suitable version using gatewaying techniques, or it can throw a
MessagingException, indicating failure. For example, the SMTP transport
implementation recognizes MimeMessages. It invokes the writeTo method on a
MimeMessage object to generate a RFC822 format byte stream that is sent to the SMTP
host.
The message is sent using the Transport.send static method or the sendMessage
instance method. The Transport.send method is a convenience method that instantiates
the transports necessary to send the message, depending on the recipients' addresses, and then
passes the message to each transport's sendMessage method. Alternatively, the client can
get the transport that implements a particular protocol itself and send the message using the
sendMessage method. This adds the benefit of being able to register as event listeners on
the individual transports.
Note that the Address[] argument passed to the send and sendMessage methods do not
need to match the addresses provided in the message headers. Although these arguments
usually will match, the end-user determines where the messages are actually sent. This is
useful for implementing the Bcc: header, and other similar functions.

Transport Events
Clients can register as listeners for events generated by transport implementations. (Note that
the abstract Transport class doesn't fire any events, only particular protocol
implementations generate events). There are two events generated: ConnectionEvent and
TransportEvent.

ConnectionEvent
If the transport connects successfully, it will fire the ConnectionEvent with the type set to
OPENED. If the connection times out or is closed, ConnectionEvent with type CLOSED is
generated.

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 Chapter 9: Transport Protocols and Mechanisms 53
Transport Events

TransportEvent
The sendMessage method generates a TransportEvent to its listeners. That event
contains information about the method’s success or failure. There are three types of
TransportEvent: MESSAGE_DELIVERED, MESSAGE_NOT_DELIVERED,
MESSAGE_PARTIALLY_DELIVERED. The event contains three arrays of addresses:
validSent[], validUnsent[], and invalid[] that list the valid and invalid
addresses for this message and protocol.

Transport Event Description

MESSAGE_DELIVERED When the message has been successfully sent to all recipients by
this transport. validSent[] contains all the addresses.
validUnsent[] and invalid[] are null.

MESSAGE_NOT_DELIVERED When ValidSent[] is null, the message was not

successfully sent to any recipients. validUnsent[] may have
addresses that are valid. invalidSent[] may contain invalid
addresses.

MESSAGE_PARTIALLY_DELIVERED Message was successfully sent to some recipients but not to all.
ValidSent[] holds addresses of recipients to whom the
message was sent. validUnsent[] holds valid addresses but
the message wasn't sent to them. invalid[] holds invalid
addresses.

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54 Chapter 9: Transport Protocols and Mechanisms
Using The Transport Class

Using The Transport Class

The code segment below sends a MimeMessage using a Transport class implementing
the SMTP protocol. The client creates two InternetAddress objects that specify the
recipients and retrieves a Transport object from the default Session that supports
sending messages to Internet addresses. Then the Session object uses a Transport object
to send the message.

// Get a session
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

// Create an empty MimeMessage and its part

Message msg = new MimeMessage(session);
... add headers and message parts as before

// create two destination addresses

Address[] addrs = {new InternetAddress("[email protected]"),
new InternetAddress("[email protected]")};

// get a transport that can handle sending message to

// InternetAddresses. This will probably map to a transport
// that supports SMTP.
Transport trans = session.getTransport(addrs[0]);

// add ourselves as ConnectionEvent and TransportEvent listeners

trans.addConnectionListener(this);
trans.addTransportListener(this);

// connect method determines what host to use from the

// session properties
trans.connect();

// send the message to the addresses we specified above

trans.sendMessage(msg, addrs);

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 55

Chapter 10:

Internet Mail
The JavaMail specification does not define any implementation. However, the API does
include a set of classes that implement Internet Mail standards. Although not part of the
specification, these classes can be considered part of the JavaMail package. They show how to
adapt an existing messaging architecture to the JavaMail framework.
These classes implement the Internet Mail Standards defined by the RFCs listed below:
? RFC822 (Standard for the Format of Internet Text Messages)
? RFC2045, RFC2046, RFC2047 (MIME)
RFC822 describes the structure of messages exchanged across the Internet. Messages are
viewed as having a header and contents. The header is composed of a set of standard and
optional header fields. The header is separated from the content by a blank line. The RFC
specifies the syntax for all header fields and the semantics of the standard header fields. It
does not however, impose any structure on the message contents.
The MIME RFCs 2045, 2046 and 2047 define message content structure by defining
structured body parts, a typing mechanism for identifying different media types, and a set of
encoding schemes to encode data into mail-safe characters.
The Internet Mail package allows clients to create, use and send messages conforming to the
standards listed above. It gives service providers a set of base classes and utilities they can use
to implement Stores and Transports that use the Internet mail protocols. See “MimeMessage
Object Hierarchy” on page 89 for a Mime class and interface hierarchy diagram.
The JavaMail MimePart interface models an entity as defined in RFC2045, Section 2.4.
MimePart extends the JavaMail Part interface to add MIME-specific methods and semantics.
The MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart classes implement the MimePart interface. The
following figure shows the class hierarchy of these classes.

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56 Chapter 10: Internet Mail
The MimeMessage Class

FIGURE 10-1

Message MimePart

Legend
Extends
MimeMessage Implements

BodyPart MimePart

MimeBodyPart

The MimeMessage Class

The MimeMessage class extends Message and implements MimePart. This class
implements an email message that conforms to the RFC822 and MIME standards.
The MimeMessage class provides a default constructor that creates an empty
MimeMessage object. The client can fill in the message later by invoking the parse
method on an RFC822 input stream. Note that the parse method is protected, so that only
this class and its subclasses can use this method. Service providers implementing ’light-
weight’ Message objects that are filled in on demand can generate the appropriate byte
stream and invoke the parse method when a component is requested from a message.
Service providers that can provide a separate byte stream for the message body (distinct from
the message header) can override the getContentStream method.
The client can also use the default constructor to create new MimeMessage objects for
sending. The client sets appropriate attributes and headers, inserts content into the message
object, and finally calls the send method for that MimeMessage object.
This code sample creates a new MimeMessage object for sending. See “Message
Composition” on page 45 and “Transport Protocols and Mechanisms” on page 51 for details.

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 Chapter 10: Internet Mail 57
The MimeBodyPart Class

MimeMessage m = new MimeMessage(session);

// Set FROM:
m.setFrom(new InternetAddress("[email protected]"));
// Set TO:
InternetAddress a[] = new InternetAddress[1];
a[0] = new InternetAddress("[email protected]");
m.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO, a);
// Set content
m.setContent(data, "text/plain");
// Send message
Transport.send(m);
The MimeMessage class also provides a constructor that uses an input stream to instantiate
itself. The constructor internally invokes the parse method to fill in the message. The
InputStream object is left positioned at the end of the message body.

InputStream in = getMailSource(); // a stream of mail messages

MimeMessage m = null;
for (; ;) {
try {
m = new MimeMessage(session,in);
} catch (MessagingException ex) {
// reached end of message stream
break;
}
}

MimeMessage implements the writeTo method by writing an RFC822-formatted byte

stream of its headers and body. This is accomplished in two steps: First, the MimeMessage
object writes out its headers; then it delegates the rest to the DataHandler object
representing the content.

The MimeBodyPart Class

The MimeBodyPart class extends BodyPart and implements the MimePart interface.
This class represents a Part inside a Multipart. MimeBodyPart implements a Body
Part as defined by RFC2045, Section 2.5.
The getBodyPart(int index) returns the MimeBodyPart object at the given index.
MimeMultipart also allows the client to fetch MimeBodyPart objects based on their
Content-IDs.
The addBodyPart method adds a new MimeBodyPart object to a MimeMultipart as
a step towards constructing a new multipart MimeMessage.

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58 Chapter 10: Internet Mail
The MimeMultipart Class

The MimeMultipart Class

The MimeMultipart class extends Multipart and models a MIME multipart content
within a message or a body part.
A MimeMultipart is obtained from a MimePart containing a ContentType attribute
set to multipart, by invoking that part's getContent method.
The client creates a new MimeMultipart object by invoking its default constructor. To
create a new multipart MimeMessage, create a MimeMultipart object (or its subclass);
use set methods to fill in the appropriate MimeBodyParts; and finally, use
setContent(Multipart) to insert it into the MimeMessage.
MimeMultipart also provides a constructor that takes an input stream positioned at the
beginning of a MIME multipart stream. This class parses the input stream and creates the child
body parts.
The getSubType method returns the multipart message MIME subtype. The subtype
defines the relationship among the individual body parts of a multipart message. More
semantically complex multipart subtypes are implemented as subclasses of
MimeMultipart, providing additional methods that expose specific functionality.
Note that a multipart content object is treated like any other content. When parsing a MIME
Multipart stream, the JavaMail implementation uses the JAF framework to locate a suitable
DataContentHandler for the specific subtype and uses that handler to create the appropriate
Multipart instance. Similarly, when generating the output stream for a Multipart object,
the appropriate DataContentHandler is used to generate the stream.

The MimeUtility Class

MimeUtility is a utility class that provides MIME-related functions. All methods in this
class are static methods. These methods currently perform the functions listed below:

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 Chapter 10: Internet Mail 59
The MimeUtility Class

Content Encoding and Decoding

Data sent over RFC 821/822-based mail systems are restricted to 7-bit US-ASCII bytes.
Therefore, any non-US-ASCII content needs to be encoded into the 7-bit US-ASCII (mail-
safe) format. MIME (RFC 2045) specifies the “base64” and “quoted-printable” encoding
schemes to perform this encoding. The following methods support content encoding:
? The getEncoding method takes a DataSource object and returns the Content-
Transfer-Encoding that should be applied to the data in that DataSource object to make
it mail-safe.
? The encode method wraps an encoder around the given output stream based on the
specified Content-Transfer-Encoding. The decode method decodes the given input
stream, based on the specified Content-Transfer-Encoding.

Header Encoding and Decoding

RFC 822 restricts the data in message headers to 7bit US-ASCII characters. MIME (RFC
2047) specifies a mechanism to encode non 7bit US-ASCII characters so that they are suitable
for inclusion in message headers. This section describes the methods that enable this
functionality.
The header-related methods (getHeader, setHeader) in Part and Message operate on Strings.
String objects contain (16 bit) Unicode characters.
Since RFC 822 prohibits non US-ASCII characters in headers, clients invoking the
setHeader() methods must ensure that the header values are appropriately encoded if they
contain non US-ASCII characters.
The encoding process (based on RFC 2047) consists of two steps:
1. Convert the Unicode String into an array of bytes in another charset. This step is required
because Unicode is not yet a widely used charset. Therefore, a client must convert the
Unicode characters into a charset that is more palatable to the recipient.
2. Apply a suitable encoding format that ensures that the bytes obtained in the previous step
are mail-safe.
The encodeText method combines the two steps listed above to create an encoded header.
Note that as RFC 2047 specifies, only “unstructured” headers and user-defined extension
headers can be encoded. It is prudent coding practice to run such header values through the
encoder to be safe. Also note that the encodeText method encodes header values only if
they contain non US-ASCII characters.
The reverse of this process (decoding) needs to be performed when handling header values
obtained from a MimeMessage or MimeBodyPart using the getHeader set of methods, since
those headers might be encoded as per RFC 2047. The decodeText method takes a header
value, applies RFC 2047 decoding standards, and returns the decoded value as a Unicode
String. Note that this method should be invoked only on “unstructured” or user-defined

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60 Chapter 10: Internet Mail
The ContentType Class

headers. Also note that decodeText attempts decoding only if the header value was encoded
in RFC 2047 style. It is advised that you always run header values through the decoder to be
safe.

The ContentType Class

The ContentType class is a utility class that parses and generates MIME content-type
headers.
To parse a MIME content-Type value, create a ContentType object and invoke the
toString method.
The ContentType class also provides methods that match Content-Type values.
The following code fragment illustrates the use of this class to extract a MIME parameter.

String type = part.getContentType();

ContentType cType = new ContentType(type);

if (cType.match("application/x-foobar"))
iString color = cType.getParameter("color");
This code sample uses this class to construct a MIME Content-Type value:
ContentType cType = new ContentType();
cType.setPrimaryType("application");
cType.setSubType("x-foobar");
cType.setParameter("color", "red");

String contentType = cType.toString();

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 61

Appendix A:

Environment Properties
This section lists some of the environment properties that are used by the JavaMail APIs. The
JavaMail javadocs contain additional information on properties supported by JavaMail.
Note that Applets can not determine some defaults listed in this Appendix. When writing an
applet, you must specify the properties you require.

Property Description Default Value

mail.store.protocol Specifies the default Message Access Protocol. The first appropriate
The Session.getStore() method returns protocol in the config
a Store object that implements this protocol. files
The client can override this property and
explicitly specify the protocol with the
Session.getStore(String
protocol) method.

mail.transport.protocol Specifies the default Transport Protocol. The The first appropriate
Session.getTransport() method protocol in the config
returns a Transport object that implements files
this protocol. The client can override this
property and explicitly specify the protocol by
using Session.getTransport(String
protocol) method.

mail.host Specifies the default Mail server. The Store The local machine
and Transport object’s connect methods
use this property, if the protocol-specific host
property is absent, to locate the target host.

mail.user Specifies the username to provide when user.name

connecting to a Mail server. The Store and
Transport object’s connect methods use
this property, if the protocol-specific username
property is absent, to obtain the username.

mail.protocol.host Specifies the protocol-specific default Mail mail.host

server. This overrides the mail.host
property.

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62 Appendix A: Environment Properties

Property Description Default Value

mail.protocol.user Specifies the protocol-specific default mail.user

username for connecting to the Mail server.
This overrides the mail.user property.

mail.from Specifies the return address of the current user. username@host

Used by the
InternetAddress.getLocalAddress
method to specify the current user’s email
address.

mail.debug Specifies the initial debug mode. Setting this false

property to true will turn on debug mode,
while setting it to false turns debug mode
off.
Note that the Session.setDebug method
also controls the debug mode.

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 63

Appendix B:

Examples Using the JavaMail API

Following are some example programs that illustrate the use of the JavaMail APIs. These
examples are also included in the JavaMail implementation.

Example: Showing a Message

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.event.*;
import javax.mail.internet.*;
import javax.activation.*;

/*
* Demo app that exercises the Message interfaces.
* Show information about and contents of messages.
*
* @author John Mani
* @author Bill Shannon
*/

public class msgshow {

static String protocol;

static String host = null;
static String user = null;
static String password = null;
static String mbox = null;
static String url = null;
static int port = -1;
static boolean verbose = false;
static boolean debug = false;
static boolean showStructure = false;
static boolean showMessage = false;
static boolean showAlert = false;
static boolean saveAttachments = false;
static int attnum = 1;

public static void main(String argv[]) {

int msgnum = -1;
int optind;
InputStream msgStream = System.in;

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64 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Showing a Message

for (optind = 0; optind < argv.length; optind++) {

if (argv[optind].equals("-T")) {
protocol = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-H")) {
host = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-U")) {
user = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-P")) {
password = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-v")) {
verbose = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-D")) {
debug = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-f")) {
mbox = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-L")) {
url = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-p")) {
port = Integer.parseInt(argv[++optind]);
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-s")) {
showStructure = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-S")) {
saveAttachments = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-m")) {
showMessage = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-a")) {
showAlert = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("--")) {
optind++;
break;
} else if (argv[optind].startsWith("-")) {
System.out.println(
"Usage: msgshow [-L url] [-T protocol] [-H host] [-p port] [-U user]");
System.out.println(
"\t[-P password] [-f mailbox] [msgnum] [-v] [-D] [-s] [-S] [-a]");
System.out.println(
"or msgshow -m [-v] [-D] [-s] [-S] [-f msg-file]");
System.exit(1);
} else {
break;
}
}

try {
if (optind < argv.length)
msgnum = Integer.parseInt(argv[optind]);

// Get a Properties object

Properties props = System.getProperties();

// Get a Session object

Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);
session.setDebug(debug);

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 65
Example: Showing a Message

if (showMessage) {
MimeMessage msg;
if (mbox != null)
msg = new MimeMessage(session,
new BufferedInputStream(new FileInputStream(mbox)));
else
msg = new MimeMessage(session, msgStream);
dumpPart(msg);
System.exit(0);
}

// Get a Store object

Store store = null;
if (url != null) {
URLName urln = new URLName(url);
store = session.getStore(urln);
if (showAlert) {
store.addStoreListener(new StoreListener() {
public void notification(StoreEvent e) {
String s;
if (e.getMessageType() == StoreEvent.ALERT)
s = "ALERT: ";
else
s = "NOTICE: ";
System.out.println(s + e.getMessage());
}
});
}
store.connect();
} else {
if (protocol != null)
store = session.getStore(protocol);
else
store = session.getStore();

// Connect
if (host != null || user != null || password != null)
store.connect(host, port, user, password);
else
store.connect();
}

// Open the Folder

Folder folder = store.getDefaultFolder();

if (folder == null) {
System.out.println("No default folder");
System.exit(1);
}

if (mbox == null)

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66 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Showing a Message

mbox = "INBOX";
folder = folder.getFolder(mbox);
if (folder == null) {
System.out.println("Invalid folder");
System.exit(1);
}

// try to open read/write and if that fails try read-only

try {
folder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);
} catch (MessagingException ex) {
folder.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);
}
int totalMessages = folder.getMessageCount();

if (totalMessages == 0) {
System.out.println("Empty folder");
folder.close(false);
store.close();
System.exit(1);
}

if (verbose) {
int newMessages = folder.getNewMessageCount();
System.out.println("Total messages = " + totalMessages);
System.out.println("New messages = " + newMessages);
System.out.println("-------------------------------");
}

if (msgnum == -1) {
// Attributes & Flags for all messages ..
Message[] msgs = folder.getMessages();

// Use a suitable FetchProfile

FetchProfile fp = new FetchProfile();
fp.add(FetchProfile.Item.ENVELOPE);
fp.add(FetchProfile.Item.FLAGS);
fp.add("X-Mailer");
folder.fetch(msgs, fp);

for (int i = 0; i < msgs.length; i++) {

System.out.println("--------------------------");
System.out.println("MESSAGE #" + (i + 1) + ":");
dumpEnvelope(msgs[i]);
// dumpPart(msgs[i]);
}
} else {
System.out.println("Getting message number: " + msgnum);
Message m = null;

try {
m = folder.getMessage(msgnum);
dumpPart(m);

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 67
Example: Showing a Message

} catch (IndexOutOfBoundsException iex) {

System.out.println("Message number out of range");
}
}

folder.close(false);
store.close();
} catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Oops, got exception! " + ex.getMessage());
ex.printStackTrace();
System.exit(1);
}
System.exit(0);
}

public static void dumpPart(Part p) throws Exception {

if (p instanceof Message)
dumpEnvelope((Message)p);

/** Dump input stream ..

InputStream is = p.getInputStream();
// If "is" is not already buffered, wrap a BufferedInputStream
// around it.
if (!(is instanceof BufferedInputStream))
is = new BufferedInputStream(is);
int c;
while ((c = is.read()) != -1)
System.out.write(c);

**/

String ct = p.getContentType();
try {
pr("CONTENT-TYPE: " + (new ContentType(ct)).toString());
} catch (ParseException pex) {
pr("BAD CONTENT-TYPE: " + ct);
}
String filename = p.getFileName();
if (filename != null)
pr("FILENAME: " + filename);

/*
* Using isMimeType to determine the content type avoids
* fetching the actual content data until we need it.
*/
if (p.isMimeType("text/plain")) {
pr("This is plain text");
pr("---------------------------");
if (!showStructure && !saveAttachments)
System.out.println((String)p.getContent());
} else if (p.isMimeType("multipart/*")) {
pr("This is a Multipart");

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68 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Showing a Message

pr("---------------------------");
Multipart mp = (Multipart)p.getContent();
level++;
int count = mp.getCount();
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
dumpPart(mp.getBodyPart(i));
level--;
} else if (p.isMimeType("message/rfc822")) {
pr("This is a Nested Message");
pr("---------------------------");
level++;
dumpPart((Part)p.getContent());
level--;
} else {
if (!showStructure && !saveAttachments) {
/*
* If we actually want to see the data, and it's not a
* MIME type we know, fetch it and check its Java type.
*/
Object o = p.getContent();
if (o instanceof String) {
pr("This is a string");
pr("---------------------------");
System.out.println((String)o);
} else if (o instanceof InputStream) {
pr("This is just an input stream");
pr("---------------------------");
InputStream is = (InputStream)o;
int c;
while ((c = is.read()) != -1)
System.out.write(c);
} else {
pr("This is an unknown type");
pr("---------------------------");
pr(o.toString());
}
} else {
// just a separator
pr("---------------------------");
}
}

/*
* If we're saving attachments, write out anything that
* looks like an attachment into an appropriately named
* file. Don't overwrite existing files to prevent
* mistakes.
*/
if (saveAttachments && level != 0 && !p.isMimeType("multipart/*")){
String disp = p.getDisposition();
// many mailers don't include a Content-Disposition
if (disp == null || disp.equalsIgnoreCase(Part.ATTACHMENT)) {
if (filename == null)

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 69
Example: Showing a Message

filename = "Attachment" + attnum++;

pr("Saving attachment to file " + filename);
try {
File f = new File(filename);
if (f.exists())
// XXX - could try a series of names
throw new IOException("file exists");
((MimeBodyPart)p).saveFile(f);
} catch (IOException ex) {
pr("Failed to save attachment: " + ex);
}
pr("---------------------------");
}
}
}

public static void dumpEnvelope(Message m) throws Exception {

pr("This is the message envelope");
pr("---------------------------");
Address[] a;
// FROM
if ((a = m.getFrom()) != null) {
for (int j = 0; j < a.length; j++)
pr("FROM: " + a[j].toString());
}

// TO
if ((a = m.getRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO)) != null) {
for (int j = 0; j < a.length; j++) {
pr("TO: " + a[j].toString());
InternetAddress ia = (InternetAddress)a[j];
if (ia.isGroup()) {
InternetAddress[] aa = ia.getGroup(false);
for (int k = 0; k < aa.length; k++)
pr(" GROUP: " + aa[k].toString());
}
}
}

// SUBJECT
pr("SUBJECT: " + m.getSubject());

// DATE
Date d = m.getSentDate();
pr("SendDate: " +
(d != null ? d.toString() : "UNKNOWN"));

// FLAGS
Flags flags = m.getFlags();
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
Flags.Flag[] sf = flags.getSystemFlags(); // get the system flags

boolean first = true;

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70 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Showing a Message

for (int i = 0; i < sf.length; i++) {

String s;
Flags.Flag f = sf[i];
if (f == Flags.Flag.ANSWERED)
s = "\\Answered";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.DELETED)
s = "\\Deleted";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.DRAFT)
s = "\\Draft";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.FLAGGED)
s = "\\Flagged";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.RECENT)
s = "\\Recent";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.SEEN)
s = "\\Seen";
else
continue; // skip it
if (first)
first = false;
else
sb.append(' ');
sb.append(s);
}

String[] uf = flags.getUserFlags(); // get the user flag strings

for (int i = 0; i < uf.length; i++) {
if (first)
first = false;
else
sb.append(' ');
sb.append(uf[i]);
}
pr("FLAGS: " + sb.toString());

// X-MAILER
String[] hdrs = m.getHeader("X-Mailer");
if (hdrs != null)
pr("X-Mailer: " + hdrs[0]);
else
pr("X-Mailer NOT available");
}

static String indentStr = " ";

static int level = 0;

/**
* Print a, possibly indented, string.
*/
public static void pr(String s) {
if (showStructure)
System.out.print(indentStr.substring(0, level * 2));
System.out.println(s);
}

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 71
Example: Listing Folders

Example: Listing Folders

import java.util.Properties;
import javax.mail.*;

import com.sun.mail.imap.*;

/**
* Demo app that exercises the Message interfaces.
* List information about folders.
*
* @author John Mani
* @author Bill Shannon
*/

public class folderlist {

static String protocol = null;
static String host = null;
static String user = null;
static String password = null;
static String url = null;
static String root = null;
static String pattern = "%";
static boolean recursive = false;
static boolean verbose = false;
static boolean debug = false;

public static void main(String argv[]) throws Exception {

int optind;
for (optind = 0; optind < argv.length; optind++) {
if (argv[optind].equals("-T")) {
protocol = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-H")) {
host = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-U")) {
user = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-P")) {
password = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-L")) {
url = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-R")) {
root = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-r")) {
recursive = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-v")) {
verbose = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-D")) {
debug = true;

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72 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Listing Folders

} else if (argv[optind].equals("--")) {
optind++;
break;
} else if (argv[optind].startsWith("-")) {
System.out.println(
"Usage: folderlist [-T protocol] [-H host] [-U user] [-P password] [-L
url]");
System.out.println(
"\t[-R root] [-r] [-v] [-D] [pattern]");
System.exit(1);
} else {
break;
}
}
if (optind < argv.length)
pattern = argv[optind];

// Get a Properties object

Properties props = System.getProperties();

// Get a Session object

Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);
session.setDebug(debug);

// Get a Store object

Store store = null;
Folder rf = null;
if (url != null) {
URLName urln = new URLName(url);
store = session.getStore(urln);
store.connect();
} else {
if (protocol != null)
store = session.getStore(protocol);
else
store = session.getStore();

// Connect
if (host != null || user != null || password != null)
store.connect(host, user, password);
else
store.connect();
}

// List namespace
if (root != null)
rf = store.getFolder(root);
else
rf = store.getDefaultFolder();

dumpFolder(rf, false, "");

if ((rf.getType() & Folder.HOLDS_FOLDERS) != 0) {
Folder[] f = rf.list(pattern);

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 73
Example: Listing Folders

for (int i = 0; i < f.length; i++)

dumpFolder(f[i], recursive, " ");
}

store.close();
}

static void dumpFolder(Folder folder, boolean recurse, String tab)

throws Exception {
System.out.println(tab + "Name: " + folder.getName());
System.out.println(tab + "Full Name: " + folder.getFullName());
System.out.println(tab + "URL: " + folder.getURLName());

if (verbose) {
if (!folder.isSubscribed())
System.out.println(tab + "Not Subscribed");

if ((folder.getType() & Folder.HOLDS_MESSAGES) != 0) {

if (folder.hasNewMessages())
System.out.println(tab + "Has New Messages");
System.out.println(tab + "Total Messages: " +
folder.getMessageCount());
System.out.println(tab + "New Messages: " +
folder.getNewMessageCount());
System.out.println(tab + "Unread Messages: " +
folder.getUnreadMessageCount());
}
if ((folder.getType() & Folder.HOLDS_FOLDERS) != 0)
System.out.println(tab + "Is Directory");

/*
* Demonstrate use of IMAP folder attributes
* returned by the IMAP LIST response.
*/
if (folder instanceof IMAPFolder) {
IMAPFolder f = (IMAPFolder)folder;
String[] attrs = f.getAttributes();
if (attrs != null && attrs.length > 0) {
System.out.println(tab + "IMAP Attributes:");
for (int i = 0; i < attrs.length; i++)
System.out.println(tab + " " + attrs[i]);
}
}
}

System.out.println();

if ((folder.getType() & Folder.HOLDS_FOLDERS) != 0) {

if (recurse) {
Folder[] f = folder.list();
for (int i = 0; i < f.length; i++)
dumpFolder(f[i], recurse, tab + " ");
}

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74 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Search a Folder for a Message

}
}
}

Example: Search a Folder for a Message

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.internet.*;
import javax.mail.search.*;
import javax.activation.*;

/*
* Search the given folder for messages matching the given
* criteria.
*
* @author John Mani
*/

public class search {

static String protocol = "imap";

static String host = null;
static String user = null;
static String password = null;
static String mbox = "INBOX";
static String url = null;
static boolean debug = false;

public static void main(String argv[]) {

int optind;

String subject = null;

String from = null;
boolean or = false;
boolean today = false;

for (optind = 0; optind < argv.length; optind++) {

if (argv[optind].equals("-T")) {
protocol = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-H")) {
host = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-U")) {
user = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-P")) {
password = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-or")) {
or = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-D")) {

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 75
Example: Search a Folder for a Message

debug = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-f")) {
mbox = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-L")) {
url = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-subject")) {
subject = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-from")) {
from = argv[++optind];
} else if (argv[optind].equals("-today")) {
today = true;
} else if (argv[optind].equals("--")) {
optind++;
break;
} else if (argv[optind].startsWith("-")) {
System.out.println(
"Usage: search [-D] [-L url] [-T protocol] [-H host] " +
"[-U user] [-P password] [-f mailbox] " +
"[-subject subject] [-from from] [-or] [-today]");
System.exit(1);
} else {
break;
}
}

try {

if ((subject == null) && (from == null) && !today) {

System.out.println(
"Specify either -subject, -from or -today");
System.exit(1);
}

// Get a Properties object

Properties props = System.getProperties();

// Get a Session object

Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);
session.setDebug(debug);

// Get a Store object

Store store = null;
if (url != null) {
URLName urln = new URLName(url);
store = session.getStore(urln);
store.connect();
} else {
if (protocol != null)
store = session.getStore(protocol);
else
store = session.getStore();

// Connect

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76 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Search a Folder for a Message

if (host != null || user != null || password != null)

store.connect(host, user, password);
else
store.connect();
}

// Open the Folder

Folder folder = store.getDefaultFolder();

if (folder == null) {
System.out.println("Cant find default namespace");
System.exit(1);
}

folder = folder.getFolder(mbox);
if (folder == null) {
System.out.println("Invalid folder");
System.exit(1);
}

folder.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);
SearchTerm term = null;

if (subject != null)
term = new SubjectTerm(subject);
if (from != null) {
FromStringTerm fromTerm = new FromStringTerm(from);
if (term != null) {
if (or)
term = new OrTerm(term, fromTerm);
else
term = new AndTerm(term, fromTerm);
}
else
term = fromTerm;
}
if (today) {
ReceivedDateTerm dateTerm =
new ReceivedDateTerm(ComparisonTerm.EQ, new Date());
if (term != null) {
if (or)
term = new OrTerm(term, dateTerm);
else
term = new AndTerm(term, dateTerm);
}
else
term = dateTerm;
}

Message[] msgs = folder.search(term);

System.out.println("FOUND " + msgs.length + " MESSAGES");
if (msgs.length == 0) // no match

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 77
Example: Search a Folder for a Message

System.exit(1);

// Use a suitable FetchProfile

FetchProfile fp = new FetchProfile();
fp.add(FetchProfile.Item.ENVELOPE);
folder.fetch(msgs, fp);

for (int i = 0; i < msgs.length; i++) {

System.out.println("--------------------------");
System.out.println("MESSAGE #" + (i + 1) + ":");
dumpPart(msgs[i]);
}

folder.close(false);
store.close();
} catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Oops, got exception! " + ex.getMessage());
ex.printStackTrace();
}

System.exit(1);
}

public static void dumpPart(Part p) throws Exception {

if (p instanceof Message) {
Message m = (Message)p;
Address[] a;
// FROM
if ((a = m.getFrom()) != null) {
for (int j = 0; j < a.length; j++)
System.out.println("FROM: " + a[j].toString());
}

// TO
if ((a = m.getRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO)) != null) {
for (int j = 0; j < a.length; j++)
System.out.println("TO: " + a[j].toString());
}

// SUBJECT
System.out.println("SUBJECT: " + m.getSubject());

// DATE
Date d = m.getSentDate();
System.out.println("SendDate: " +
(d != null ? d.toLocaleString() : "UNKNOWN"));

// FLAGS:
Flags flags = m.getFlags();
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
Flags.Flag[] sf = flags.getSystemFlags(); // get the sys flags

boolean first = true;

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78 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Search a Folder for a Message

for (int i = 0; i < sf.length; i++) {

String s;
Flags.Flag f = sf[i];
if (f == Flags.Flag.ANSWERED)
s = "\\Answered";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.DELETED)
s = "\\Deleted";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.DRAFT)
s = "\\Draft";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.FLAGGED)
s = "\\Flagged";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.RECENT)
s = "\\Recent";
else if (f == Flags.Flag.SEEN)
s = "\\Seen";
else
continue; // skip it
if (first)
first = false;
else
sb.append(' ');
sb.append(s);
}

String[] uf = flags.getUserFlags(); // get the user flag strs

for (int i = 0; i < uf.length; i++) {
if (first)
first = false;
else
sb.append(' ');
sb.append(uf[i]);
}
System.out.println("FLAGS = " + sb.toString());
}

System.out.println("CONTENT-TYPE: " + p.getContentType());

/* Dump input stream

InputStream is = ((MimeMessage)m).getInputStream();
int c;
while ((c = is.read()) != -1)
System.out.write(c);
*/

Object o = p.getContent();
if (o instanceof String) {
System.out.println("This is a String");
System.out.println((String)o);
} else if (o instanceof Multipart) {
System.out.println("This is a Multipart");
Multipart mp = (Multipart)o;
int count = mp.getCount();
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 79
Example: Monitoring a Mailbox

dumpPart(mp.getBodyPart(i));
} else if (o instanceof InputStream) {
System.out.println("This is just an input stream");
InputStream is = (InputStream)o;
int c;
while ((c = is.read()) != -1)
System.out.write(c);
}
}
}

Example: Monitoring a Mailbox

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.event.*;
import javax.activation.*;

/* Monitors given mailbox for new mail */

public class monitor {

public static void main(String argv[]) {

if (argv.length != 5) {
System.out.println(
"Usage: monitor <host> <user> <password> <mbox> <freq>");
System.exit(1);
}
System.out.println("\nTesting monitor\n");

try {
Properties props = System.getProperties();

// Get a Session object

Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);
// session.setDebug(true);

// Get a Store object

Store store = session.getStore("imap");

// Connect
store.connect(argv[0], argv[1], argv[2]);

// Open a Folder
Folder folder = store.getFolder(argv[3]);
if (folder == null || !folder.exists()) {
System.out.println("Invalid folder");
System.exit(1);
}

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80 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Sending a Message

folder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);

// Add messageCountListener to listen for new messages

folder.addMessageCountListener(new MessageCountAdapter() {
public void messagesAdded(MessageCountEvent ev) {
Message[] msgs = ev.getMessages();
System.out.println("Got " + msgs.length +
" new messages");

// Just dump out the new messages

for (int i = 0; i < msgs.length; i++) {
try {
DataHandler dh = msgs[i].getDataHandler();
InputStream is = dh.getInputStream();
int c;
while ((c = is.read()) != -1)
System.out.write(c);
} catch (IOException ioex) {
ioex.printStackTrace();
} catch (MessagingException mex) {
mex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
});

// Check mail once in "freq" MILLIseconds

int freq = Integer.parseInt(argv[4]);

for (; ;) {
Thread.sleep(freq); // sleep for freq milliseconds

// This is to force the IMAP server to send us

// EXISTS notifications.
folder.getMessageCount();
}

} catch (Exception ex) {

ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

Example: Sending a Message

import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import javax.mail.*;

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 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API 81
Example: Sending a Message

import javax.mail.internet.*;
import javax.activation.*;

/**
* msgmultisendsample creates a simple multipart/mixed message and sends
* it. Both body parts are text/plain.
* <p>
* usage: <code>java msgmultisendsample <i>to from smtp true|false</i></
code>
* where <i>to</i> and <i>from</i> are the destination and
* origin email addresses, respectively, and <i>smtp</i>
* is the hostname of the machine that has smtp server
* running. The last parameter either turns on or turns off
* debugging during sending.
*
* @author Max Spivak
*/
public class msgmultisendsample {
static String msgText1 = "This is a message body.\nHere's line two.";
static String msgText2 = "This is the text in the message attachment.";

public static void main(String[] args) {

if (args.length != 4) {
System.out.println(
"usage: java msgmultisend <to> <from> <smtp> true|false");
return;
}

String to = args[0];
String from = args[1];
String host = args[2];
boolean debug = Boolean.valueOf(args[3]).booleanValue();

// create some properties and get the default Session

Properties props = new Properties();
props.put("mail.smtp.host", host);

Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);

session.setDebug(debug);

try {
// create a message
MimeMessage msg = new MimeMessage(session);
msg.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from));
InternetAddress[] address = {new InternetAddress(to)};
msg.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO, address);
msg.setSubject("JavaMail APIs Multipart Test");
msg.setSentDate(new Date());

// create and fill the first message part

MimeBodyPart mbp1 = new MimeBodyPart();
mbp1.setText(msgText1);

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82 Appendix B: Examples Using the JavaMail API
Example: Sending a Message

// create and fill the second message part

MimeBodyPart mbp2 = new MimeBodyPart();
// Use setText(text, charset), to show it off !
mbp2.setText(msgText2, "us-ascii");

// create the Multipart and its parts to it

Multipart mp = new MimeMultipart();
mp.addBodyPart(mbp1);
mp.addBodyPart(mbp2);

// add the Multipart to the message

msg.setContent(mp);

// send the message

Transport.send(msg);
} catch (MessagingException mex) {
mex.printStackTrace();
Exception ex = null;
if ((ex = mex.getNextException()) != null) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}

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 83

Appendix C:

Message Security

Overview
This is not a full specification of how Message Security will be integrated into the JavaMail
system. This is a description of implementation strategy. The purpose of this section is to
declare that it is possible to integrate message security, not to define how it will be integrated.
The final design for Message Security will change based on feedback and finalization of the S/
MIME IETF specification.
This section discusses encrypting/decrypting messages, and signing/verifying signatures. It
will not discuss how Security Restrictions on untrusted or signed applets will work, nor will it
discuss a general authentication model for Stores (For example; a GSS API in the Java
platform.)

Displaying an Encrypted/Signed Message

Displaying an encrypted or signed message is the same as displaying any other message. The
client uses the DataHandler for that encrypted message together with the "view" command.
This returns a bean that displays the data. There will be both a multipart/signed and multipart/
encrypted viewer bean (can be the same bean). The beans will need to be aware of the
MultiPartSigned/MultiPartEncrypted classes.

MultiPartEncrypted/Signed Classes
The JavaMail API will probably add two new content classes: MultiPartEncrypted and
MultiPartSigned. They subclass the MultiPart class and handle the MIME types
multipart/encrypted and multipart/signed. There are many possible "protocols" that specify
how a message has been encrypted and/or signed. The MPE/MPS classes will find all the
installed protocols. The ContentType’s protocol parameter determines which protocol class
to use. There needs to be a standard registration of protocol objects or a way to search for
valid packages and instantiate a particular class. The MultiPart classes will hand off the
control information, other parameters, and the data to be manipulated (either the signed or
encrypted block) through some defined Protocol interface.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

84 Appendix C: Message Security
Overview

Reading the Contents

There will be times when an applet/application needs to retrieve the content of the message
without displaying it. The code sample below shows one possible technique with a message
containing encrypted content:

Message msg = // message gotten from some folder.

if (msg.isMimeType("multipart/encrypted")) {
Object o = msg.getContent();
if (o instanceof MultiPartEncrypted) {
MultiPartEncrypted mpe = (MultiPartEncrypted) o;
mpe.decrypt();
// use the default keys/certs from the user.
// We should alsobe able to determine
// whether or not to interact with the user

// should then be able to use the multipart methods to

// get any contained blocks }
}
}
The getContent method returns a MultiPartEncrypted object. There will be methods
on this class to decrypt the content. The decryption could either determine which keys needed
to be used, use the defaults (maybe the current user’s keys) or explicitly pass which keys/
certificates to use.

Verifying Signatures
Applications/applets will need to verify the validity of a signature. The code sample below
shows how this might be done:

Message msg = // message gotten from some folder

if (msg.isMimeType("multipart/signed")) {
Object o = msg.getContent();
if (o instanceof MultiPartSigned) {
MultiPartSigned mps = (MultiPartSigned) o;
boolean validsig = mps.verifySignature();

// could already get the other blocks

// even if it wasn't a valid signature
}
}
If the signature is invalid, the application can still access the data. There will be methods in
MultiPartSigned that allow the setting of which keys or certificates to use when verifying
the signature.

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 Appendix C: Message Security 85
Overview

Creating a Message
There are two methods for creating an Encrypted/Signed message. Users will probably see an
editor bean for the content types multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted. These beans would
handle the UI components to allow the user to select how they want to encrypt/sign the
message. The beans could be integrated into an application’s Message Composition window.

Encrypted/Signed
The non-GUI method of creating the messages involves using the MultiPartEncrypted/Signed
classes. The classes can be created and used as the content for a message. The following code
shows how might work:

MultiPartEncrypted mpe = new MultiPartEncrypted();

// Can setup parameters for how you want to encrypt the
// message; otherwise, it will use the user's preferences.
// Set the content you wish to encrypt (to encrypt multiple
// contents a multipart/mixed block should be used)
String ourContent = "Please encrypt me!";
mpe.setContent(ourContent);

MimeMessage m = new MimeMessage(session);

m.setContent(mpe);
The message will be encrypted when the message is sent. There will be other methods that
allow the setting of which encryption scheme shall be used, and the keys involved.
Creating a Multipart Signed message is very similar to creating a Multipart Encrypted
message, except that a Multipart Signed object is created instead.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

86 Appendix C: Message Security
Overview

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 87

Appendix D:

Part and Multipart Class Diagram

This appendix illustrates relationships between Part interfaces and Message classes.

FIGURE D-1

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

88 Appendix D: Part and Multipart Class Diagram

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 89

Appendix E:

MimeMessage Object Hierarchy

This appendix illustrates the object hierarchy.

FIGURE E-1

MimeMessage Object
NestedMultipart Message
Message
<address of message sender> Legend:
getFrom()

getSubject() <message subject> method() method call and

object returned
getContentType()
"multipart/mixed"

getContent() "text/plain"
"3"
BodyPart getContentType()

Multipart getCount()
(String)getContent() <message text>

<Text> getBodyPart(0)
"image/gif"

BodyPart getContentType() DataHandler

<Image> use the DataHandler
getBodyPart(1) getDataHandler() methods to access
Multipart the image
getBodyPart(2) BodyPart
getContentType() "multipart/mixed"

Multipart
(Multipart)getContent() repeat with Multipart
as before...
...

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

90 Appendix E: MimeMessage Object Hierarchy

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 91

Appendix F:

Features Added in JavaMail 1.1

This appendix summarizes the features added to JavaMail 1.1. For more information about
each item, refer to the appropriate Javadoc documentation.

The MessageContext Class and MessageAware Interface

In some cases it is desirable for the object representing the content of a BodyPart object to
know something about the context in which it is operating. For example, the content-object
might need to know what other data is contained in the same Multipart object, who sent
the message containing the data, and so forth. This allows for more interesting content types
that know more about the message containing them and the mail system in general.
Some uses of the multipart/related object might require these capabilities. For
instance, the handler for a text/html body part contained in a multipart/related
object might need to know about the containing object in order to find the related image data
needed to display the HTML document. (Note that JavaMail provides no direct support for
multipart/related messages.)
To deal with these issues, the MessageContext class and MessageAware interface have
been added in JavaMail 1.1.
The MessageContext class provides the basic information about the context in which a
content object is operating. Given a MessageContext object, it is possible to navigate
through a message’s body structure. The MessageAware interface is an optional interface,
implemented by DataSources that have the capability of providing a suitable
MessageContext object. The MimePartDataSource implements the MessageAware
interface, making this capability available to all MIME messages.

The getMessageID method

The getMessageID method has been added to the MimeMessage class. This method
returns the value of RFC822 Message-ID field.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

92 Appendix F: Features Added in JavaMail 1.1
Additions to the InternetAddress Class

Additions to the InternetAddress Class

The encodedPersonal protected field has been added to the
javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress class.
The toString(Address[], int) method has also been added to this class

Additions to the MimeUtility Class

Two static methods have been added to the javax.mail.internet.MimeUtility
class:
? String mimeCharset(String charset)
? String getDefaultJavaCharset()
The mimeCharset method returns the MIME name of the given JDKTM charset.
The getDefaultJavaCharset method returns the default JDK charset for the platform’s
locale.

New SearchTerms
The current address related search terms: AddressTerm, FromTerm and
RecipientTerm, are limited in that they operate on Address objects, not Strings.
These terms use the equals methd to compare the addresses, which is not useful for the
common case of substring comparisons.
Hence three new SearchTerms have been introduced:
? AddressStringTerm
? FromStringTerm
? RecipientStringTerm
These terms operate on Address Strings, rather than Address objects.
These new terms correspond to the capabilities provided by the IMAP protocol. The older
terms were not supported by IMAP and thus resulted in client-side searches.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix F: Features Added in JavaMail 1.1 93
Additions to the Folder Class

Additions to the Folder Class

Two methods have been added to the javax.mail.Folder class:
? int getMode()
? URLName getURLName()
The getMode method returns the mode in which the Folder object was opened.
The getURLName method returns the URLName value of the folder.

New Service Class

To emphasize the commonality in behavior between the Store and Transport classes, and
to simplify maintenance of these classes, a new superclass, javax.mail.Service, has
been introduced for the Store and Transport classes.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

94 Appendix F: Features Added in JavaMail 1.1
New Service Class

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 95

Appendix G:

Features Added in JavaMail 1.2

This appendix summarizes the features that were added in JavaMail 1.2. Refer to the
appropriate Javadoc documentation for additional information about each item,.

Additions to the MimeMessage Class

The following have been added to the MimeMessage class:
? To simplify the creation of MimeMessage subclasses:
– The modified field and the parse(InputStream is) method that were
previously private are now protected.
– The createInternetHeaders(InputStream is) method has also been
added to this class.
? When forwarding or saving a message retrieved from a Store, it is sometimes desirable to
be able to modify the message first. Since most Stores do not allow their Message
objects to be modified, the message must first be copied. To simplify copying a
MimeMessage, we introduce a copy constructor, MimeMessage(MimeMessage
source), that allows a new MimeMessage to be created and initialized with a copy of
another MimeMessage.
? The following convenience methods were added to MimeMessage.
– setRecipients(Message.RecipientType type, String addresses)
– addRecipients(Message.RecipientType type, String addresses)
Note that these methods take a String for setting/adding a recipient (instead of
javax.mail.Address objects).
? One of the most common errors encountered when constructing new messages is
forgetting to call the saveChanges() method before writing out the message or calling
the Transport.sendMessage() method. To solve this problem, a saved flag was
added to MimeMessage and the writeTo() method was changed accordingly.

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96 Appendix G: Features Added in JavaMail 1.2
Additions to the MimeMultipart Class

Additions to the MimeMultipart Class

To simplify the creation of MimeMultipart subclasses, the following have been added to
the MimeMultipart class:
? The parse(InputStream is) method that was previously private is now protected.
? The createInternetHeaders(InputStream is) and
createMimeBodyPart(InternetHeaders headers, byte[] content)
methods have been added to this class as protected methods.

The getRawInputStream method

In some cases, it is desirable to get the data for a body part before JavaMail attempts to decode
it. This is particularly important if the Content-Transfer-Encoding header is incorrect. (For
example, some mail software is known to use "7-bit" instead of the MIME-defined "7-bit".)
Access to this data is currently provided through the protected getContentStream method.
Since simply making this method public has the potential to cause a source incompatibility for
any subclasses that declare this method as protected, we instead add a new public method,
getRawInputStream(),that calls this protected method to the MimeMessage and
MimeBodyPart classes.

Additions to the InternetAddress Class

The following were added to the InternetAddress class:
? To simplify copying of InternetAddress objects, the InternetAddress class now
implements the Cloneable interface and will provide a public clone() method.
? AddressStringTerm.match does not return the correct results in some situations
because it wants to do the match against the formatted address string in Unicode, not the
ASCII version that might include charset encoding information. To do this, it attempts to
format the address itself, but its logic does not handle all the rules about formatting an
address (such as, when to quote the personal name) so it does this formatting differently
than InternetAddress.toString does. When the address contains only ASCII
characters, the formatting should be identical. This problem has been remedied by adding
a new method, toUnicodeString(), to the InternetAddress class, which
returns a properly formatted address (RFC 822 syntax) of Unicode characters.
? The InternetAddress class now implements the Serializable interface to
support saving javax.mail.search terms (described in “Additions for serializable
javax.mail.search terms”).

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix G: Features Added in JavaMail 1.2 97
The MailDateFormat Class

The MailDateFormat Class

The MailDateFormat class is now part of the javax.mail.internet package. It was
previously contained in the com.sun.mail.util package. This is a utility class used in
formatting and parsing dates in MIME headers. The methods it provides are:
? StringBuffer format(Date date,
StringBuffer dateStrBuf,
FieldPosition fieldPosition)
? Date parse(String text, ParsePosition pos)

Additions to Exceptions and Events

The following exceptions and events have been added in JavaMail 1.2:
? Previously, if a client attempted to open a read-only folder in read-write mode, a
MessagingException was thrown. This exception type does not indicate that the
anomaly was caused by the lack of write-permissions. A new
ReadOnlyFolderException was added to indicate that the problem was caused by a
read-only folder.
? When authentication with a server fails, the server often supplies some information in its
protocol message that indicates the reason for the failure. To allow a service provider to
return this information to the user, we now allow the Service.protocolConnect()
method to throw an AuthenticationFailedException in this case. The exception
may contain a string message that includes the additional information from the server.
? The FolderNotFoundException constructors were not consistent with other
exceptions defined in the API. Two new constructors were added to eliminate these
inconsistencies:
– FolderNotFoundException(Folder folder)
– FolderNotFoundException(Folder folder, String s)
? If an error occurs when sending a message, the TransportEvent class saved the
message that caused the error, but provided no getMessage method for the listener to
retrieve the Message object. The getMessage() method was added to
TransportEvent class.

Additions to the Session Class

Two static convenience methods were added to the Session class for retrieving the default
Session or a new Session object, which do not require an Authenticator parameter
(assumed to be null):

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98 Appendix G: Features Added in JavaMail 1.2
Additions to the MimeUtility Class

? Session Session.getDefaultInstance(Properties props)

? Session Session.getInstance(Properties props)

Additions to the MimeUtility Class

The following were added to the MimeUtility class to provide additional support for
encoding:
? The UUEncode encoder requires the filename to be inserted into the encoded stream. The
public access point to the encoder is through the MimeUtility.encode() method,
which does not have any parameter that can provide the filename. Hence the uuencoded
stream always has "encode.buf" as filename. A new method, that allows the setting of
the filename has been added:
encode(OutputStream os, String encoding, String filename)
? The getEncoding() method which was previously added to improve the performance
of JavaMail was changed from package private to public.

Additions for serializable javax.mail.search terms

The javax.mail.search package allows you to programmatically construct a search term.
As a convenience, these terms can now be saved in persistent storage and restored in a later
session. The simplest way to store these expressions is to use serialization.
Many of the search terms reference other objects that must also be serializable. The most
problematic such objects are of the class Message.RecipientType. This class uses the
java "type-safe enum" idiom, which involves a number of static final instances of the class.
Applications are allowed to test for equivalence with these "constants" by using the "=="
equality operator. Thus, it’s critical that only a single instance of each constant exist in the
Java virtual machine. To ensure that this constraint is met when deserializing an object of this
class, we must take advantage of the J2SE 1.2 readReplace() method. Since this method
is not available on JDK 1.1, objects of this class, and thus search terms that reference them,
can not be correctly deserialized on JDK 1.1. This is a limitation of this new capability.

To provide this support, the following classes and all their subclasses now implement the
Serializable interface:
? javax.mail.search.SearchTerm
? javax.mail.Address
? javax.mail.Flags
? javax.mail.Message.RecipientType

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 Appendix G: Features Added in JavaMail 1.2 99
Additions to the Store Class

In addition, to allow comparison between search terms, the equals and hashCode methods
on SearchTerm (and all subclasses) now implement "value" equivalence rather than identity
equivalence.

Additions to the Store Class

The following methods have been added to javax.mail.Store to provide namespace
information:
? Folder[] getPersonalNamespaces()
A personal namespace is a set of names that is considered within the personal scope of the
authenticated user. Typically, only the authenticated user has access to mail folders in
their personal namespace. If an INBOX exists for a user, it must appear within the user’s
personal namespace. In the typical case, there should be only one personal namespace for
each user in each Store.
? Folder[] getUserNamespaces(String user)
The namespaces returned represent the personal namespaces for the user. To access mail
folders in the other user’s namespace, the currently authenticated user must be explicitly
granted access rights. For example, it is common for a manager to grant to their secretary
access rights to their mail folders.
? Folder[] getSharedNamespaces()
A shared namespace is a namespace that consists of mail folders that are intended to be
shared amongst users and do not exist within a user’s personal namespace.

New ContentDisposition Class

The ContentDisposition class contained in javax.mail.internet package has
been changed from package private to public.

New performance improvements

To allow us to improve the performance of the MimeMessage and MimeMultipart classes
when parsing data from an InputStream, we introduce a new SharedInputStream
interface that allows the data in the InputStream to be shared instead of copied, and we use
this new interface in key parts of the implementation. The methods defined by the
SharedInputStream interface are:
? long getPosition()

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100 Appendix G: Features Added in JavaMail 1.2
Additions to the ParameterList class

? InputStream newStream(long start, long end)

A new protected InputStream (which implements the SharedInputStream interface)
data member, contentStream, has been added to the MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart
classes.

Additions to the ParameterList class

The ParameterList.toString() method returns its results "unfolded". It would be
useful to have the results "folded" in certain situations. A new method,
ParameterList.toString(int used), will be added which will return "folded"
results. Folding is defined by RFC 822 as the process of splitting a header field into multiple
lines. "The general rule is that wherever there may be linear-white-space (NOT simply LWSP-
chars), a CRLF immediately followed by AT LEAST one LWSP-char may instead be
inserted." Unfolding is the process of returning to a single line representation. "Unfolding is
accomplished by regarding CRLF immediately followed by a LWSP-char as equivalent to the
LWSP-char."

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 101

Appendix H:

Features Added in JavaMail 1.3

This appendix summarizes the features that were added in JavaMail 1.3. Refer to the
appropriate Javadoc documentation for additional information about each item. The numbers
in parentheses are bug numbers; you can find more information about the bug reports at:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/index.jsp

Add setSender and getSender methods to MimeMessage

(4405115)
These convenience methods support setting and reading the RFC 822 Sender header.

/**
* Returns the value of the RFC 822 "Sender" header field.
* If the "Sender" header field is absent, <code>null</code>
* is returned.<p>
*
* This implementation uses the <code>getHeader</code> method
* to obtain the requisite header field.
*
* @return Address object
* @exception MessagingException
* @see #headers
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public Address getSender() throws MessagingException

/**
* Set the RFC 822 "Sender" header field. Any existing values are
* replaced with the given address. If address is <code>null</code>,
* this header is removed.
*
* @param address the sender of this message
* @exception IllegalWriteException if the underlying
* implementation does not support modification
* of existing values
* @exception IllegalStateException if this message is
* obtained from a READ_ONLY folder.
* @exception MessagingException
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/

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102 Appendix H: Features Added in JavaMail 1.3
Add setContentID method to MimeBodyPart (4377720)

public void setSender(Address address) throws MessagingException

Add setContentID method to MimeBodyPart (4377720)

This convenience method supports setting the Content-ID header.

/**
* Set the "Content-ID" header field of this body part.
* If the <code>cid</code> parameter is null, any existing
* "Content-ID" is removed.
*
* @exception IllegalWriteException if the underlying
* implementation does not support modification
* @exception IllegalStateException if this body part is
* obtained from a READ_ONLY folder.
* @exception MessagingException
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public void setContentID(String cid) throws MessagingException

Add mail.mime.charset property (4377731)

The mail.mime.charset System property (NOTE: not Session property) names the
default charset to be used by JavaMail. If not set, the standard J2SE file.encoding
System property is used. This allows applications to specify a default character set for sending
messages that’s different than the character set used for files stored on the system. This is
common on Japanese systems.

Add getDeletedMesageCount method to Folder (4388730)

This convenience method returns a count of the number of deleted messages in a folder.

/**
* Get the number of deleted messages in this Folder. <p>
*
* This method can be invoked on a closed folder. However, note
* that for some folder implementations, getting the deleted message
* count can be an expensive operation involving actually opening
* the folder. In such cases, a provider can choose not to support
* this functionality in the closed state, in which case this method
* must return -1. <p>
*
* Clients invoking this method on a closed folder must be aware
* that this is a potentially expensive operation. Clients must

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 Appendix H: Features Added in JavaMail 1.3 103
Support parsing illegal Internet addresses (4650940)

* also be prepared to handle a return value of -1 in this case. <p>

*
* This implementation returns -1 if this folder is closed. Else
* this implementation gets each Message in the folder using
* <code>getMessage(int)</code> and checks whether its
* <code>DELETED</code> flag is set. The total number of messages
* that have this flag set is returned.
*
* @return number of deleted messages. -1 may be returned
* by certain implementations if this method is
* invoked on a closed folder.
* @exception FolderNotFoundException if this folder does
* not exist.
* @exception MessagingException
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public int getDeletedMessageCount() throws MessagingException

Support parsing illegal Internet addresses (4650940)

The parse method on the InternetAddress class takes a flag that tells whether or not to
strictly enforce the RFC822 syntax rules. Currently, when the flag is false most rules are still
checked while a few are not. To better support the range of invalid addresses seen in real
messages, and in combination with the following two changes, the parseHeader method would
enforce fewer syntax rules when the strict flag is false and would enforce more rules when the
strict flag is true. If the strict flag is false and the parse is successful in separating out an
email address or addresses, the syntax of the addresses themselves would not be checked.
(Introducing a new method preserves compatibility with users of the existing parse method.)

/**
* Parse the given sequence of addresses into InternetAddress
* objects. If <code>strict</code> is false, the full syntax rules for
* individual addresses are not enforced. If <code>strict</code> is
* true, many (but not all) of the RFC822 syntax rules are enforced.
*
* Non-strict parsing is typically used when parsing a list of
* mail addresses entered by a human. Strict parsing is typically
* used when parsing address headers in mail messages.
*
* @param addresslist comma separated address strings
* @param strict enforce RFC822 syntax
* @return array of InternetAddress objects
* @exception AddressException if the parse failed
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public static InternetAddress[] parseHeader(String s, boolean strict)
throws AddressException

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104 Appendix H: Features Added in JavaMail 1.3
Add mail.mime.address.strict property (4650940)

To allow applications to check the syntax of addresses that might’ve been parsed with the
strict flag set to false, we add a validate method.

/**
* Validate that this address conforms to the syntax rules
* of RFC 822. The current implementation checks many, not
* all, syntax rules. Note that, even though the syntax of
* the address may be correct, there’s no guarantee that a
* mailbox of that name exists.
*
* @exception AddressException if the address
* isn’t valid.
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public void validate() throws AddressException

To control the strict flag when constructing a single InternetAddress object we add a new
constructor.

/**
* Parse the given string and create an InternetAddress.
* If <code>strict</code> is false, the detailed syntax of the
* address isn’t checked.
*
* @param address the address in RFC822 format
* @param strict enforce RFC822 syntax
* @exception AddressException if the parse failed
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public InternetAddress(String address, boolean strict)
throws AddressException

Add mail.mime.address.strict property (4650940)

The MimeMessage class will use the new parseHeader method introduced above to parse
headers in messages. The mail.mime.address.strict Session property will control the
strict flag passed to the parseHeader method. The default is true.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix H: Features Added in JavaMail 1.3 105
Add mail.mime.decodetext.strict property (4201203)

Add mail.mime.decodetext.strict property (4201203)

RFC 2047 requires that encoded text start at the beginning of a whitespace separated word.
Some mailers, especially Japanese mailers, improperly encode text and included encoded text
in the middle of words. The mail.mime.decodetext.strict System property (NOTE:
not Session property) controls whether JavaMail will attempt to decode such incorrectly
encoded text. The default is true.

Add mail.mime.encodeeol.strict property (4650949)

When choosing an encoding for the data of a message, JavaMail assumes that any of CR, LF,
or CRLF are valid line terminators in message parts that contain only printable ASCII
characters, even if the part is not a MIME text type. It’s common, especially on UNIX
systems, for data of MIME type application/octet-stream (for example) to really be textual data
that should be transmitted with the encoding rules for MIME text. In rare cases, such pure
ASCII text may in fact be binary data in which the CR and LF characters must be preserved
exactly. The mail.mime.encodeeol.strict System property (NOTE: not Session
property) controls whether JavaMail will consider a lone CR or LF in a body part that’s not a
MIME text type to indicate that the body part needs to be encoded.

Add isGroup and getGroup methods to InternetAddress

(4650952)
To better support RFC822 group addresses, the following methods would be added.

/**
* Indicates whether this address is an RFC 822 group address.
* Note that a group address is different than the mailing
* list addresses supported by most mail servers. Group addresses
* are rarely used; see RFC 822 for details.
*
* @return true if this address represents a group
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public boolean isGroup()

/**
* Return the members of a group address. A group may have zero,
* one, or more members. If this address is not a group, null
* is returned. The <code>strict</code> parameter controls whether
* the group list is parsed using strict RFC 822 rules or not.
* The parsing is done using the <code>parseHeader</code> method.
*

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106 Appendix H: Features Added in JavaMail 1.3
Support per-session debug output stream (4517686)

* @return array of InternetAddress objects, or null

* @exception AddressException if the group list can’t be parsed
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public InternetAddress[] getGroup(boolean strict)
throws AddressException

Support per-session debug output stream (4517686)

To allow the debugging output for a session to be redirected, we add the following methods to
Session.

/**
* Set the stream to be used for debugging output for this session.
* If <code>out</code> is null, <code>System.out</code> will be used.
* Note that debugging output that occurs before any session is
created,
* as a result of setting the <code>mail.debug</code> system property,
* will always be sent to <code>System.out</code>.
*
* @param out the PrintStream to use for debugging output
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public void setDebugOut(PrintStream out)

/**
* Returns the stream to be used for debugging output. If no stream
* has been set, <code>System.out</code> is returned.
*
* @return the PrintStream to use for debugging output
* @since JavaMail 1.3
*/
public PrintStream getDebugOut()

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 107

Appendix I:

Features Added in JavaMail 1.4

This appendix summarizes the features that were added in JavaMail 1.4. Refer to the
appropriate Javadoc documentation for additional information about each item. The numbers
in parentheses are bug numbers; you can find more information about the bug reports at:
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/index.jsp

Add MimePart.setText(text, charset, subtype) method

(6300765)
The setText method is a convenience method used to set the content for a text/plain part.
With the increased use of HTML and XML in mail messages, it would be useful to have a
convenience method to set content of those types as well. To support this usage we add a new
method to the MimePart interface:

/**
* Convenience method that sets the given String as this part’s
* content, with a primary MIME type of “text” and the specified
* MIME subtype. The given Unicode string will be charset-encoded
* using the specified charset. The charset is also used to set
* the “charset” parameter.
*
* @param text the text content to set
* @param charset the charset to use for the text
* @param subtype the MIME subtype to use (e.g., “html”)
* @exception MessagingException if an error occurs
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void setText(String text, String charset, String subtype)
throws MessagingException;

The MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart classes, which implement the MimePart interface,
will be updated to provide implementations of the new method.

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108 Appendix I: Features Added in JavaMail 1.4
Add mail.mime.encodefilename and decodefilename properties (6300768)

Add mail.mime.encodefilename and decodefilename

properties (6300768)
According to the MIME spec (RFC 2047), filenames included in the filename parameter of the
Content-Disposition header may not include MIME “encoded-words”, and thus may contain
only US-ASCII characters. However, many mailers violate this spec requirement and use
standard MIME encoding techniques to store non-ASCII filenames in this filename parameter.
If the mail.mime.encodefilename System property is set to “true”. the
MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart setFileName methods will use the
MimeUtility.encodeText method to encode the filename.
If the mail.mime.decodefilename System property is set to “true”. the
MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart getFileName methods will use the
MimeUtility.decodeText method to decode the filename.
Both of these properties default to “false”.
The following text is added to the MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart setFileName
methods:

* If the <code>mail.mime.encodefilename</code> System property

* is set to true, the {@link MimeUtility#encodeText
* MimeUtility.encodeText method will be used to encode the
* filename. While such encoding is not supported by the MIME
* spec, many mailers use this technique to support non-ASCII
* characters in filenames. The default value of this property
* is false.

The following text is added to the MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart getFileName

methods:

* If the <code>mail.mime.encodefilename</code> System property

* is set to true, the {@link MimeUtility#decodeText
* MimeUtility.decodeText method will be used to decode the
* filename. While such encoding is not supported by the MIME
* spec, many mailers use this technique to support non-ASCII
* characters in filenames. The default value of this property
* is false.

Add Service.connect(user, password) (6300771)

This convenience method uses the host already known to the Service (Transport or Store).
Equivalent to connect(null, user, password).

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 Appendix I: Features Added in JavaMail 1.4 109
Add mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingendboundary System property (4971381)

/**
* Connect to the current host using the specified username
* and password. This method is equivalent to calling the
* <code>connect(host, user, password)</code> method with null
* for the host name.
*
* @param user the user name
* @param password this user’s password
* @exception AuthenticationFailedException for authentication failures
* @exception MessagingException for other failures
* @exception IllegalStateException if the service is already connected
* @see javax.mail.event.ConnectionEvent
* @see javax.mail.Session#setPasswordAuthentication
* @see #connect(java.lang.String, java.lang.String, java.lang.String)
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void connect(String user, String password)
throws MessagingException

Add mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingendboundary
System property (4971381)
The current implementation of the MimeMultipart class will ignore a missing end
boundary line; if EOF is reached when parsing the content before seeing an end boundary line,
the last part of the multipart is terminated and no error is returned.
Some users have requested a way to force the multipart parsing to more strictly enforce the
MIME specification. To support this we we introduce a new System property:

mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingendboundary

If this property is set to “false” MimeMultipart will throw a MessagingException

when parsing a multipart that does not include the proper end boundary line.
This property is already supported as part of the JavaMail implementation. This change makes
the property a part of the standard API.

* The <code>mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingendboundary</code>
* System property may be set to <code>false</code> to cause a
* <code>MessagingException</code> to be thrown if the multipart
* data does not end with the required end boundary line. If this
* property is set to <code>true</code> or not set, missing end
* boundaries are not considered an error and the final body part
* ends at the end of the data. <p>

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110 Appendix I: Features Added in JavaMail 1.4
Add MimeMultipart.isComplete() method (6300811)

Add MimeMultipart.isComplete() method (6300811)

As described above, parsing of a MIME multipart may terminate without an error, even though
no final boundary line was seen. This method will return true if the final boundary line was
seen. This will allow applications to successfully parse mal-formed messages, while also
being able to tell that they were mal-formed.

/**
* Return true if the final boundary line for this
* multipart was seen. When parsing multipart content,
* this class will (by default) terminate parsing with
* no error if the end of input is reached before seeing
* the final multipart boundary line. In such a case,
* this method will return false. (If the System property
* “mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingendboundary” is set to
* false, parsing such a message will instead throw a
* MessagingException.)
*
* @return true if the final boundary line was seen
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public boolean isComplete() throws MessagingException

Add
mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingboundaryparamet
er property (6300814)
The following property is already supported as part of the JavaMail implementation. This
change makes the property a part of the standard API.

* The <code>mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingboundaryparameter</code>
* System property may be set to <code>false</code> to cause a
* <code>MessagingException</code> to be thrown if the Content-Type
* of the MimeMultipart does not include a <code>boundary</code> parameter.
* If this property is set to <code>true</code> or not set, the multipart
* parsing code will look for a line that looks like a bounary line and
* use that as the boundary separating the parts.

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 Appendix I: Features Added in JavaMail 1.4 111
Add MimeMultipart getPreamble and setPreamble methods (6300828)

Add MimeMultipart getPreamble and setPreamble methods

(6300828)
In a MIME multipart message, it’s possible to include text between the headers and the first
boundary line. This text is called the preamble. It may include instructions for users of non-
MIME compliant software. The getPreamble method allows access to this text when
available. (Note that IMAP servers provide no convenient access to this text.) The
setPreamble method allows an application to set the preamble for a message being
constructed.

/**
* Get the preamble text, if any, that appears before the
* first body part of this multipart. Some protocols,
* such as IMAP, will not allow access to the preamble text.
*
* @return the preamble text, or null if no preamble
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public String getPreamble() throws MessagingException

/**
* Set the preamble text to be included before the first
* body part. Applications should generally not include
* any preamble text. In some cases it may be helpful to
* include preamble text with instructions for users of
* pre-MIME software.
*
* @param preamble the preamble text
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void setPreamble(String preamble) throws MessagingException

Add MimeMessage.updateMessageID() protected method

(6300831)
Some applications want more control over the data that’s used to create the Message-ID for a
message. This method allows an application to provide a simple subclass of MimeMessage
that overrides the Message-ID algorithm.

/**
* Update the Message-ID header. This method is called
* by the <code>updateHeaders</code> and allows a subclass
* to override only the algorithm for choosing a Message-ID.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4

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112 Appendix I: Features Added in JavaMail 1.4
Add MimeMessage.createMimeMessage() protected method (6300833)

*/
protected void updateMessageID() throws MessagingException

Add MimeMessage.createMimeMessage() protected method

(6300833)
The MimeMessage.reply method creates and returns a new MimeMessage. Subclasses
of MimeMessage may need the reply method to create a new message of the appropriate
subclass. This method allows subclasses to control the class created in this case.

/**
* Create and return a MimeMessage object. The reply method
* uses this method to create the MimeMessage object that it
* will return. Subclasses can override this method to return
* a subclass of MimeMessage. This implementation simply constructs
* and returns a MimeMessage object using the supplied Session.
*
* @param session the Session to use for the new message
* @return the new MimeMessage object
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
protected MimeMessage createMimeMessage(Session session)
throws MessagingException

Make the part field of MimePartDataSource protected (6300834)

Subclasses of MimePartDataSource may need access to the part field in order to
implement the getInputStream method. The part field is currently private, this change
will make it protected.

/**
* The MimePart that provides the data for this DataSource.
*
* @sinceJavaMail 1.4
*/
protected MimePart part;

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix I: Features Added in JavaMail 1.4 113
Folder.getSeparator should not require the folder to exist (6301381)

Folder.getSeparator should not require the folder to exist

(6301381)
IMAP folders are able to determine the separator character without knowing whether the
folder exists. Checking whether the folder exists in order to throw
FolderNotFoundException introduces additional overhead. Because other methods
often need to know the separator character, this overhead can be noticable. The specification
of this method is changed as follows:

/**
* Return the delimiter character that separates this Folder’s pathname
* from the names of immediate subfolders. This method can be invoked
* on a closed Folder.
*
* @exception FolderNotFoundException if the implementation
* requires the folder to exist, but it does not
* @return Hierarchy separator character
*/
public abstract char getSeparator() throws MessagingException;

Add PreencodedMimeBodyPart class (6301386)

In some cases an application will have data that has already been encoded using (for example)
base64 encoding. There should be an easy way to attach such data to a message without the
need to decode it and reencode it. This class provides such support.

/**
* A MimeBodyPart that handles data that has already been encoded.
* This class is useful when constructing a message and attaching
* data that has already been encoded (for example, using base64
* encoding). The data may have been encoded by the application,
* or may have been stored in a file or database in encoded form.
* The encoding is supplied when this object is created. The data
* is attached to this object in the usual fashion, by using the
* <code>setText</code>, <code>setContent</code>, or
* <code>setDataHandler</code> methods.
*
* @sinceJavaMail 1.4
*/

public class PreencodedMimeBodyPart extends MimeBodyPart {

/**
* Create a PreencodedMimeBodyPart that assumes the data is
* encoded using the specified encoding. The encoding must
* be a MIME supported Content-Transfer-Encoding.
*/

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Add MimeBodyPart attachFile and saveFile methods (6301390)

public PreencodedMimeBodyPart(String encoding)

}

Add MimeBodyPart attachFile and saveFile methods

(6301390)
It’s very common for applications to create messages with files as attachments, and to receive
attachments and save them in files. To simplify this usable, we add several convenience
methods to the MimeBodyPart class:

/**
* Use the specified file to provide the data for this part.
* The simple file name is used as the file name for this
* part and the data in the file is used as the data for this
* part. The encoding will be chosen appropriately for the
* file data.
*
* @param file the File object to attach
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void attachFile(File file)
throws IOException, MessagingException

/**
* Use the specified file to provide the data for this part.
* The simple file name is used as the file name for this
* part and the data in the file is used as the data for this
* part. The encoding will be chosen appropriately for the
* file data.
*
* @param file the name of the file to attach
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void attachFile(String file)
throws IOException, MessagingException

/**
* Save the contents of this part in the specified file. The content
* is decoded and saved, without any of the MIME headers.
*
* @param file the File object to write to
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/

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Add MimeUtility fold and unfold methods (6302118)

public void saveFile(File file) throws IOException, MessagingException

/**
* Save the contents of this part in the specified file. The content
* is decoded and saved, without any of the MIME headers.
*
* @param file the name of the file to write to
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void saveFile(String file)
throws IOException, MessagingException

Add MimeUtility fold and unfold methods (6302118)

When dealing with long header lines, it’s often necessary to fold the lines to avoid exceeding
line length limitations. When retrieving the data from such headers, the folding needs to be
undone. The JavaMail implementation includes private fold and unfold methods for this
purpose. These methods should be made public.

/**
* Fold a string at linear whitespace so that each line is no longer
* than 76 characters, if possible. If there are more than 76
* non-whitespace characters consecutively, the string is folded at
* the first whitespace after that sequence. The parameter
* <code>used</code> indicates how many characters have been used in
* the current line; it is usually the length of the header name. <p>
*
* Note that line breaks in the string aren’t escaped; they probably
* should be.
*
* @param used characters used in line so far
* @param s the string to fold
* @return the folded string
*/
public static String fold(int used, String s)

/**
* Unfold a folded header. Any line breaks that aren’t escaped and
* are followed by whitespace are removed.
*
* @param s the string to unfold
* @return the unfolded string
*/
public static String unfold(String s)

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Allow more control over headers in InternetHeaders object (6302832)

Allow more control over headers in InternetHeaders object

(6302832)
Some applications, such as mail server applications, need more control over the order of
headers in the InternetHeaders class. To support such usage, we allow such applications
to subclass InternetHeaders and access the List of headers directly.
InternetHeaders exposes a protected field:

protected List headers;

The elements of the list are objects of a new protected final class
InternetHeaders.InternetHeader that extends the javax.mail.Header class.
To allow the InternetHeader class to make use of the Header class, we make the
following fields of Header protected:

/**
* The name of the header.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
protected String name;

/**
* The value of the header.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
protected String value;

Allow applications to dynamically register new protocol providers

(6302835)
Some applications would like to register new protocol providers at runtime rather than
depending on the JavaMail configuration files and resources. To support such usage we make
the constructor for the Provider class public:

/**
* Create a new provider of the specified type for the specified
* protocol. The specified class implements the provider.
*
* @param type Type.STORE or Type.TRANSPORT
* @param protocol valid protocol for the type
* @param classname class name that implements this protocol

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* @param vendor optional string identifying the vendor (may be null)

* @param version optional implementation version string (may be null)
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public Provider(Type type, String protocol, String classname,
String vendor, String version)

We also add a new method to Session to allow registering such Providers:

/**
* Add a provider to the session.
*
* @param provider the provider to add
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void addProvider(Provider provider)

Allow applications to dynamically register address type mappings

(4377727)
Along with the above item, some applications will want to dynamically control the mapping
from address type to protocol. This could also be used to change the default internet protocol
from “smtp” to “smtps”. We add the following method to Session:

/**
* Set the default transport protocol to use for addresses of
* the specified type. Normally the default is set by the
* <code>javamail.default.address.map</code> or
* <code>javamail.address.map</code> files or resources.
*
* @param addresstype type of address
* @param protocol name of protocol
* @see #getTransport(Address)
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void setProtocolForAddress(String addresstype, String protocol)

ParameterList class should support non US-ASCII parameters

(4107342)
RFC 2231 describes a method for encoding non-ASCII parameters in MIME headers. We
introduce the following System properties to control encoding and decoding such parameters.
If the mail.mime.encodeparameters System property is set to “true”. non-ASCII
parameters will be encoded per RFC 2231.

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Standard interface for Stores that support quotas (6304051)

If the mail.mime.decodeparameters System property is set to “true”. parameters

encoded per RFC 2231 will be decoded.
Both of these properties default to “false”.
Note that RFC 2231 also describes a technique for splitting long parameter values across
multiple parameters. We do not plan to support such parameter continuations.
To allow specifying the charset to use for a parameter, we add the following method to
ParameterList:

/**
* Set a parameter. If this parameter already exists, it is
* replaced by this new value. If the
* <code>mail.mime.encodeparameters</code> System property
* is true, and the parameter value is non-ASCII, it will be
* encoded with the specified charset.
*
* @param name name of the parameter.
* @param value value of the parameter.
* @param charset charset of the parameter value.
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void set(String name, String value, String charset)

Standard interface for Stores that support quotas (6304051)

Some IMAP stores support quotas. To allow applications to make use of quota support
without depending on IMAP-specific APIs, we provide a QuotaAwareStore interface that
Stores, such as the IMAP Store, can implement. We also provide a Quota class to
represent a set of quotas for a quota root.

package javax.mail;

/**
* An interrface implemented by Stores that support quotas.
* The {@link #getQuota getQuota} and {@link #setQuota setQuota} methods
* support the quota model defined by the IMAP QUOTA extension.
* Refer to <A HREF=”http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2087.txt”>RFC 2087</A>
* for more information. <p>
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public interface QuotaAwareStore {
/**
* Get the quotas for the named quota root.
* Quotas are controlled on the basis of a quota root, not
* (necessarily) a folder. The relationship between folders

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Standard interface for Stores that support quotas (6304051)

* and quota roots depends on the server. Some servers

* might implement a single quota root for all folders owned by
* a user. Other servers might implement a separate quota root
* for each folder. A single folder can even have multiple
* quota roots, perhaps controlling quotas for different
* resources.
*
* @param root the name of the quota root
* @return array of Quota objects
* @exception MessagingException if the server doesn’t support the
* QUOTA extension
*/
Quota[] getQuota(String root) throws MessagingException;

/**
* Set the quotas for the quota root specified in the quota argument.
* Typically this will be one of the quota roots obtained from the
* <code>getQuota</code> method, but it need not be.
*
* @param quota the quota to set
* @exception MessagingException if the server doesn’t support the
* QUOTA extension
*/
void setQuota(Quota quota) throws MessagingException;
}

package javax.mail;

/**
* This class represents a set of quotas for a given quota root.
* Each quota root has a set of resources, represented by the
* <code>Quota.Resource</code> class. Each resource has a name
* (for example, “STORAGE”), a current usage, and a usage limit.
* See RFC 2087.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/

public class Quota {

/**
* An individual resource in a quota root.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public static class Resource {
/** The name of the resource. */
public String name;
/** The current usage of the resource. */
public long usage;
/** The usage limit for the resource. */
public long limit;

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Add ByteArrayDataSource class (4623517)

/**
* Construct a Resource object with the given name,
* usage, and limit.
*
* @param name the resource name
* @param usage the current usage of the resource
* @param limit the usage limit for the resource
*/
public Resource(String name, long usage, long limit)
}

/**
* The name of the quota root.
*/
public String quotaRoot;

/**
* The set of resources associated with this quota root.
*/
public Quota.Resource[] resources;

/**
* Create a Quota object for the named quotaroot with no associated
* resources.
*
* @param quotaRoot the name of the quota root
*/
public Quota(String quotaRoot)

/**
* Set a resource limit for this quota root.
*
* @param name the name of the resource
* @param limit the resource limit
*/
public void setResourceLimit(String name, long limit)
}

Add ByteArrayDataSource class (4623517)

The ByteArrayDataSource has been included in the JavaMail demo source code for quite
some time. Quite a few applications need a class of this sort. It’s time to add it as a standard
API. To avoid conflicting with applications that have used the demo version, we put this
version in a new javax.mail.util package.

package javax.mail.util;

/**
* A DataSource backed by a byte array. The byte array may be

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Add ByteArrayDataSource class (4623517)

* passed in directly, or may be initialized from an InputStream

* or a String.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public class ByteArrayDataSource implements DataSource {
/**
* Create a ByteArrayDataSource with data from the
* specified byte array and with the specified MIME type.
*/
public ByteArrayDataSource(byte[] data, String type)

/**
* Create a ByteArrayDataSource with data from the
* specified InputStream and with the specified MIME type.
* The InputStream is read completely and the data is
* stored in a byte array.
*/
public ByteArrayDataSource(InputStream is, String type)
throws IOException

/**
* Create a ByteArrayDataSource with data from the
* specified String and with the specified MIME type.
* The MIME type should include a <code>charset</code>
* parameter specifying the charset to be used for the
* string. If the parameter is not included, the
* default charset is used.
*/
public ByteArrayDataSource(String data, String type) throws IOException

/**
* Return an InputStream for the data.
* Note that a new stream is returned each time
* this method is called.
*/
public InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException

/**
* Return an OutputStream for the data.
* Writing the data is not supported; an <code>IOException</code>
* is always thrown.
*/
public OutputStream getOutputStream() throws IOException

/**
* Get the MIME content type of the data.
*/
public String getContentType()

/**
* Get the name of the data.
* By default, an empty string (““) is returned.

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Add SharedByteArrayInputStream class (6304189)

*/
public String getName()

/**
* Set the name of the data.
*/
public void setName(String name)
}

Add SharedByteArrayInputStream class (6304189)

The SharedInputStream interface allows the JavaMail implementation to efficiently
process data when parsing messages, without needing to make many copies of the data. This
class is an implementation of the SharedInputStream interface that uses a byte array as
the backing store.

package javax.mail.util;

/**
* A ByteArrayInputStream that implements the SharedInputStream interface,
* allowing the underlying byte array to be shared between multiple
* readers.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public class SharedByteArrayInputStream extends ByteArrayInputStream
implements SharedInputStream {
/**
* Position within shared buffer that this stream starts at.
*/
protected int start;

/**
* Create a SharedByteArrayInputStream representing the entire
* byte array.
*/
public SharedByteArrayInputStream(byte[] buf)

/**
* Create a SharedByteArrayInputStream representing the part
* of the byte array from <code>offset</code> for <code>length</code>
* bytes.
*/
public SharedByteArrayInputStream(byte[] buf, int offset, int length)

/**
* Return the current position in the InputStream, as an
* offset from the beginning of the InputStream.
*

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Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193)

* @return the current position

*/
public long getPosition()

/**
* Return a new InputStream representing a subset of the data
* from this InputStream, starting at <code>start</code> (inclusive)
* up to <code>end</code> (exclusive). <code>start</code> must be
* non-negative. If <code>end</code> is -1, the new stream ends
* at the same place as this stream. The returned InputStream
* will also implement the SharedInputStream interface.
*
* @paramstartthe starting position
* @paramendthe ending position + 1
* @returnthe new stream
*/
public InputStream newStream(long start, long end)
}

Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193)

Finally, SharedFileInputStream is an implementation of the SharedInputStream
interface that uses a file as the backing store.

package javax.mail.util;

/**
* A <code>SharedFileInputStream</code> is a
* <code>BufferedInputStream</code> that buffers
* data from the file and supports the <code>mark</code>
* and <code>reset</code> methods. It also supports the
* <code>newStream</code> method that allows you to create
* other streams that represent subsets of the file.
* A <code>RandomAccessFile</code> object is used to
* access the file data.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public class SharedFileInputStream extends BufferedInputStream
implements SharedInputStream {

/**
* The file containing the data.
* Shared by all related SharedFileInputStream instances.
*/
protected RandomAccessFile in;

/**
* The normal size of the read buffer.

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Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193)

*/
protected int bufsize;

/**
* The file offset that corresponds to the first byte in
* the read buffer.
*/
protected long bufpos;

/**
* The file offset of the start of data in this subset of the file.
*/
protected long start = 0;

/**
* The amount of data in this subset of the file.
*/
protected long datalen;

/**
* Creates a <code>SharedFileInputStream</code>
* for the file.
*
* @param file the file
*/
public SharedFileInputStream(File file) throws IOException

/**
* Creates a <code>SharedFileInputStream</code>
* for the named file.
*
* @param file the file
*/
public SharedFileInputStream(String file) throws IOException

/**
* Creates a <code>SharedFileInputStream</code>
* with the specified buffer size.
*
* @param file the file
* @param size the buffer size.
* @exception IllegalArgumentException if size <= 0.
*/
public SharedFileInputStream(File file, int size) throws IOException

/**
* Creates a <code>SharedFileInputStream</code>
* with the specified buffer size.
*
* @param file the file
* @param size the buffer size.
* @exception IllegalArgumentException if size <= 0.
*/

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Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193)

public SharedFileInputStream(String file, int size) throws IOException

/**
* See the general contract of the <code>read</code>
* method of <code>InputStream</code>.
*
* @return the next byte of data, or <code>-1</code> if the end of
* the stream is reached.
* @exception IOException if an I/O error occurs.
*/
public int read() throws IOException

/**
* Reads bytes from this stream into the specified byte array,
* starting at the given offset.
*
* <p> This method implements the general contract of the corresponding
* <code>{@link java.io.InputStream#read(byte[], int, int) read}</code>
* method of the <code>{@link java.io.InputStream}</code> class.
*
* @param b destination buffer.
* @param off offset at which to start storing bytes.
* @param len maximum number of bytes to read.
* @return the number of bytes read, or <code>-1</code> if the end
* of the stream has been reached.
* @exception IOException if an I/O error occurs.
*/
public int read(byte b[], int off, int len) throws IOException

/**
* See the general contract of the <code>skip</code>
* method of <code>InputStream</code>.
*
* @param n the number of bytes to be skipped.
* @return the actual number of bytes skipped.
* @exception IOException if an I/O error occurs.
*/
public long skip(long n) throws IOException

/**
* Returns the number of bytes that can be read from this input
* stream without blocking.
*
* @return the number of bytes that can be read from this input
* stream without blocking.
* @exception IOException if an I/O error occurs.
*/
public int available() throws IOException

/**
* See the general contract of the <code>mark</code>
* method of <code>InputStream</code>.
*

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Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193)

* @param readlimit the maximum limit of bytes that can be read

* before the mark position becomes invalid.
* @see #reset()
*/
public void mark(int readlimit)

/**
* See the general contract of the <code>reset</code>
* method of <code>InputStream</code>.
* <p>
* If <code>markpos</code> is <code>-1</code>
* (no mark has been set or the mark has been
* invalidated), an <code>IOException</code>
* is thrown. Otherwise, <code>pos</code> is
* set equal to <code>markpos</code>.
*
* @exception IOException if this stream has not been marked or
* if the mark has been invalidated.
* @see #mark(int)
*/
public void reset() throws IOException

/**
* Tests if this input stream supports the <code>mark</code>
* and <code>reset</code> methods. The <code>markSupported</code>
* method of <code>SharedFileInputStream</code> returns
* <code>true</code>.
*
* @return a <code>boolean</code> indicating if this stream type
* supports the <code>mark</code> and <code>reset</code>
* methods.
* @see java.io.InputStream#mark(int)
* @see java.io.InputStream#reset()
*/
public boolean markSupported()

/**
* Closes this input stream and releases any system resources
* associated with the stream.
*
* @exception IOException if an I/O error occurs.
*/
public void close() throws IOException

/**
* Return the current position in the InputStream, as an
* offset from the beginning of the InputStream.
*
* @return the current position
*/
public long getPosition()

/**

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Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193)

* Return a new InputStream representing a subset of the data

* from this InputStream, starting at <code>start</code> (inclusive)
* up to <code>end</code> (exclusive). <code>start</code> must be
* non-negative. If <code>end</code> is -1, the new stream ends
* at the same place as this stream. The returned InputStream
* will also implement the SharedInputStream interface.
*
* @param start the starting position
* @param end the ending position + 1
* @return the new stream
*/
public InputStream newStream(long start, long end)

/**
* Force this stream to close.
*/
protected void finalize() throws Throwable
}

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Add SharedFileInputStream class (6304193)

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 129

Appendix J:

Features Added in JavaMail 1.5

This appendix summarizes the features that were added in JavaMail 1.5. Refer to the
appropriate Javadoc documentation for additional information about each item. The numbers
in parentheses are bug numbers; you can find more information about the bug reports at:
https://github.com/javaee/javamail/issues/<bug number>

Add FetchProfile.Item.SIZE (37)

The FetchProfile.Item.SIZE item allows prefetching the size of a message. Previously
this was an IMAP-specific fetch item.

/**
* SIZE is a fetch profile item that can be included in a
* <code>FetchProfile</code> during a fetch request to a Folder.
* This item indicates that the sizes of the messages in the specified
* range should be prefetched. <p>
*
* @sinceJavaMail 1.5
*/
public static final Item SIZE;

Fix protected fields in final classes in javax.mail.search (38)

Several final classes in the javax.mail.search package contain protected fields. Since the
classes are final, they can’t be subclassed, and the protected fields can not be accessed. This
change cleans up these fields by making them private. The following fields are changed:
javax.mail.search.AndTerm:
private SearchTerm[] terms;

javax.mail.search.FlagTerm:
private boolean set;
private Flags flags;

javax.mail.search.HeaderTerm:
private String headerName;

javax.mail.search.NotTerm:

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Add MimeMultipart(String subtype, BodyPart... bps) constructor (39)

private SearchTerm term;

javax.mail.search.OrTerm:
private SearchTerm[] terms;

javax.mail.search.RecipientTerm:
private Message.RecipientType type;

Add MimeMultipart(String subtype, BodyPart... bps)

constructor (39)
These convenience constructors create a MimeMultipart object given an
array or varargs list of BodyParts.

/**
* Construct a MimeMultipart object of the default “mixed” subtype,
* and with the given body parts. More body parts may be added later.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public MimeMultipart(BodyPart... parts) throws MessagingException

/**
* Construct a MimeMultipart object of the given subtype
* and with the given body parts. More body parts may be added later.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public MimeMultipart(String subtype, BodyPart... parts)
throws MessagingException

Exceptions should support exception chaining (40)

javax.mail.MessagingException was designed before exception chainging was added
to Java SE, but it does support a similar concept itself, and that support should be made
available to all subclasses.

javax.mail.AuthenticationFailedException:
/**
* Constructs an AuthenticationFailedException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.

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Exceptions should support exception chaining (40)

*
* @param message The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public AuthenticationFailedException(String message, Exception e)

javax.mail.FolderClosedException:
/**
* Constructs a FolderClosedException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param folder The Folder
* @param message The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public FolderClosedException(Folder folder, String message, Exception e)

javax.mail.FolderNotFoundException:
/**
* Constructs a FolderNotFoundException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param folder The Folder
* @param s The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public FolderNotFoundException(Folder folder, String s, Exception e)

javax.mail.IllegalWriteException:
/**
* Constructs an IllegalWriteException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param s The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public IllegalWriteException(String s, Exception e)

javax.mail.MessageRemovedException:
/**
* Constructs a MessageRemovedException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param s The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception

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Exceptions should support exception chaining (40)

* @since JavaMail 1.5

*/
public MessageRemovedException(String s, Exception e)

javax.mail.MethodNotSupportedException:
/**
* Constructs a MethodNotSupportedException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param s The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public MethodNotSupportedException(String s, Exception e)

javax.mail.NoSuchProviderException:
/**
* Constructs a NoSuchProviderException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param message The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public NoSuchProviderException(String message, Exception e)

javax.mail.ReadOnlyFolderException:
/**
* Constructs a ReadOnlyFolderException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param folder The Folder
* @param message The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public ReadOnlyFolderException(Folder folder, String message, Exception
e)

javax.mail.StoreClosedException:
/**
* Constructs a StoreClosedException with the specified
* detail message and embedded exception. The exception is chained
* to this exception.
*
* @param store The dead Store object
* @param message The detailed error message
* @param e The embedded exception
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 133
ParameterList needs to support use by IMAP (41)

public StoreClosedException(Store store, String message, Exception e)

ParameterList needs to support use by IMAP (41)

The IMAP provider has special needs when processing multi-segment parameters defined by
RFC 2231. This new method supports such use by the IMAP provider.

/**
* Normal users of this class will use simple parameter names.
* In some cases, for example, when processing IMAP protocol
* messages, individual segments of a multi-segment name
* (specified by RFC 2231) will be encountered and passed to
* the {@link #set} method. After all these segments are added
* to this ParameterList, they need to be combined to represent
* the logical parameter name and value. This method will combine
* all segments of multi-segment names. <p>
*
* Normal users should never need to call this method.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public void combineSegments()

ContentType and ContentDisposition toString should

never return null (42)
The general contract of Object.toString is that it never returns null. The toString
methods of ContentType and ContentDisposition were defined to return null in
certain error cases. Given the general toString contract it seems unlikely that anyone ever
depended on these special cases, and it would be more useful for these classes to obey the
general contract. These methods have been changed to return an empty string in these error
cases.

javax.mail.internet.ContentType:
/**
* Retrieve a RFC2045 style string representation of
* this Content-Type. Returns an empty string if
* the conversion failed.
*
* @return RFC2045 style string
*/
public String toString()

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134 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5
Add Transport.send(msg, username, password) method (44)

javax.mail.internet.ContentDisposition:
/**
* Retrieve a RFC2045 style string representation of
* this ContentDisposition. Returns an empty string if
* the conversion failed.
*
* @return RFC2045 style string
* @since JavaMail 1.2
*/
public String toString()

Add Transport.send(msg, username, password) method

(44)
It’s now very common that email servers require authentication before sending a message, so
we add these new convenience methods.

/**
* Send a message. The message will be sent to all recipient
* addresses specified in the message (as returned from the
* <code>Message</code> method <code>getAllRecipients</code>).
* The <code>send</code> method calls the <code>saveChanges</code>
* method on the message before sending it. <p>
*
* Use the specified user name and password to authenticate to
* the mail server.
*
* @param msg the message to send
* @param user the user name
* @param password this user’s password
* @exception SendFailedException if the message could not
* be sent to some or any of the recipients.
* @exception MessagingException
* @see Message#saveChanges
* @see #send(Message)
* @see javax.mail.SendFailedException
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public static void send(Message msg,
String user, String password) throws MessagingException

/**
* Send the message to the specified addresses, ignoring any
* recipients specified in the message itself. The
* <code>send</code> method calls the <code>saveChanges</code>
* method on the message before sending it. <p>
*
* Use the specified user name and password to authenticate to

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 135
Add MimeMessage.setFrom(String) method (45)

* the mail server.

*
* @param msg the message to send
* @param addresses the addresses to which to send the message
* @param user the user name
* @param password this user’s password
* @exception SendFailedException if the message could not
* be sent to some or any of the recipients.
* @exception MessagingException
* @see Message#saveChanges
* @see #send(Message)
* @see javax.mail.SendFailedException
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public static void send(Message msg, Address[] addresses,
String user, String password) throws MessagingException

Add MimeMessage.setFrom(String) method (45)

This new convenience method allows the From header to be set using a String.

/**
* Set the RFC 822 “From” header field. Any existing values are
* replaced with the given addresses. If address is <code>null</code>,
* this header is removed.
*
* @param address the sender(s) of this message
* @exception IllegalWriteException if the underlying
* implementation does not support modification
* of existing values
* @exception IllegalStateException if this message is
* obtained from a READ_ONLY folder.
* @exception MessagingException
* @since JvaMail 1.5
*/
public void setFrom(String address) throws MessagingException

Add Message.getSesssion() method (46)

Alow access to the Session used when the Message was created.

/**
* Return the Session used when this message was created.
*
* @return the message’s Session
* @since JavaMail 1.5

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136 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5
MimeBodyPart.attachFile should set the disposition to ATTACHMENT (47)

*/
public Session getSession()

MimeBodyPart.attachFile should set the disposition to

ATTACHMENT (47)
An oversight when these methods were originally added. Clearly attachments should set the
disposition to ATTACHMENT.

/**
* Use the specified file to provide the data for this part.
* The simple file name is used as the file name for this
* part and the data in the file is used as the data for this
* part. The encoding will be chosen appropriately for the
* file data. The disposition of this part is set to
* {@link Part#ATTACHMENT Part.ATTACHMENT}.
*
* @param file the File object to attach
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the
file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void attachFile(File file) throws IOException,
MessagingException

/**
* Use the specified file to provide the data for this part.
* The simple file name is used as the file name for this
* part and the data in the file is used as the data for this
* part. The encoding will be chosen appropriately for the
* file data.
*
* @param file the name of the file to attach
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the
file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.4
*/
public void attachFile(String file) throws IOException,
MessagingException

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 137
Add MimeMessage.reply(replyToAll, setAnswered) method (48)

Add MimeMessage.reply(replyToAll, setAnswered)

method (48)
Add a method to control whether the ANSWERED flag is set in the original message when
creating a reply message.

/**
* Get a new Message suitable for a reply to this message.
* The new Message will have its attributes and headers
* set up appropriately. Note that this new message object
* will be empty, i.e., it will <strong>not</strong> have a “content”.
* These will have to be suitably filled in by the client. <p>
*
* If <code>replyToAll</code> is set, the new Message will be addressed
* to all recipients of this message. Otherwise, the reply will be
* addressed to only the sender of this message (using the value
* of the <code>getReplyTo</code> method). <p>
*
* If <code>setAnswered</code> is set, the
* {@link javax.mail.Flags.Flag#ANSWERED ANSWERED} flag is set
* in this message. <p>
*
* The “Subject” field is filled in with the original subject
* prefixed with “Re:” (unless it already starts with “Re:”).
* The “In-Reply-To” header is set in the new message if this
* message has a “Message-Id” header.
*
* The current implementation also sets the “References” header
* in the new message to include the contents of the “References”
* header (or, if missing, the “In-Reply-To” header) in this message,
* plus the contents of the “Message-Id” header of this message,
* as described in RFC 2822.
*
* @param replyToAll reply should be sent to all recipients
* of this message
* @param setAnswered set the ANSWERED flag in this message?
* @return the reply Message
* @exception MessagingException
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public Message reply(boolean replyToAll, boolean setAnswered)
throws MessagingException

Add additional “next” methods to HeaderTokenizer (49)

These additional “next” methods make it easier to parse headers that don’t obey the MIME
syntax requirements.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

138 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5
Add @MailSessionDefinition and @MailSessionDefinitions for Java EE 7 (51)

/**
* Parses the next token from this String.
* If endOfAtom is not NUL, the token extends until the
* endOfAtom character is seen, or to the end of the header.
* This method is useful when parsing headers that don’t
* obey the MIME specification, e.g., by failing to quote
* parameter values that contain spaces.
*
* @param endOfAtom if not NUL, character marking end of token
* @return the next Token
* @exception ParseException if the parse fails
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public Token next(char endOfAtom) throws ParseException

/**
* Parses the next token from this String.
* endOfAtom is handled as above. If keepEscapes is true,
* any backslash escapes are preserved in the returned string.
* This method is useful when parsing headers that don’t
* obey the MIME specification, e.g., by failing to escape
* backslashes in the filename parameter.
*
* @param endOfAtom if not NUL, character marking end of token
* @param keepEscapes keep all backslashes in returned string?
* @return the next Token
* @exception ParseException if the parse fails
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public Token next(char endOfAtom, boolean keepEscapes)
throws ParseException

Add @MailSessionDefinition and

@MailSessionDefinitions for Java EE 7 (51)
These new annotations support configuring JavaMail Session resources in Java EE 7
application servers.

javax.mail.MailSessionDefinition:

/**
* Annotation used by Java EE applications to define a <code>MailSession</
code>
* to be registered with JNDI. The <code>MailSession</code> may be
configured
* by setting the annotation elements for commonly used <code>Session</
code>

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 139
Add @MailSessionDefinition and @MailSessionDefinitions for Java EE 7 (51)

* properties. Additional standard and vendor-specific properties may be

* specified using the <code>properties</code> element.
* <p/>
* The session will be registered under the name specified in the
* <code>name</code> element. It may be defined to be in any valid
* <code>Java EE</code> namespace, and will determine the accessibility of
* the session from other components.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface MailSessionDefinition {

/**
* Description of this mail session.
*/
String description() default ““;

/**
* JNDI name by which the mail session will be registered.
*/
String name();

/**
* Store protocol name.
*/
String storeProtocol() default ““;

/**
* Transport protocol name.
*/
String transportProtocol() default ““;

/**
* Host name for the mail server.
*/
String host() default ““;

/**
* User name to use for authentication.
*/
String user() default ““;

/**
* Password to use for authentication.
*/
String password() default ““;

/**
* From address for the user.
*/
String from() default ““;

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140 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5
Make cachedContent field protected in MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart (52)

/**
* Properties to include in the Session.
* Properties are specified using the format:
* <i>propertyName=propertyValue</i> with one property per array
element.
*/
String[] properties() default {};
}

javax.mail.MailSessionDefinitions:

import java.lang.annotation.Target;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;

/**
* Declares one or more <code>MailSessionDefinition</code> annotations.
*
* @see MailSessionDefinition
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface MailSessionDefinitions {
MailSessionDefinition[] value();
}

Make cachedContent field protected in MimeMessage and

MimeBodyPart (52)
Exposing this previously private field makes it easier to subclass these classes.

/**
* If our content is a Multipart or Message object, we save it
* the first time it’s created by parsing a stream so that changes
* to the contained objects will not be lost. <p>
*
* If this field is not null, it’s return by the {@link #getContent}
* method. The {@link #getContent} method sets this field if it
* would return a Multipart or MimeMessage object. This field is
* is cleared by the {@link #setDataHandler} method.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected Object cachedContent;

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 141
Make MimeMultipart fields protected to allow subclassing (53)

Make MimeMultipart fields protected to allow subclassing (53)

Most of these fields control how the MimeMultipart class parses messages that don’t
conform to the MIME spec. The new initializeProperties method initializes these
fields based on System properties. Exposing these previously private fields makes it easier
to subclass MimeMultipart.

/**
* Have we seen the final bounary line?
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected boolean complete = true;

/**
* The MIME multipart preamble text, the text that
* occurs before the first boundary line.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected String preamble = null;

/**
* Flag corresponding to the
“mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingendboundary”
* property, set in the {@link #initializeProperties} method called
* from constructors and the parse method.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected boolean ignoreMissingEndBoundary = true;

/**
* Flag corresponding to the
* “mail.mime.multipart.ignoremissingboundaryparameter”
* property, set in the {@link #initializeProperties} method called
* from constructors and the parse method.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected boolean ignoreMissingBoundaryParameter = true;

/**
* Flag corresponding to the
* “mail.mime.multipart.ignoreexistingboundaryparameter”
* property, set in the {@link #initializeProperties} method called
* from constructors and the parse method.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected boolean ignoreExistingBoundaryParameter = false;

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

142 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5
Make MimeMultipart fields protected to allow subclassing (53)

/**
* Flag corresponding to the “mail.mime.multipart.allowempty”
* property, set in the {@link #initializeProperties} method called
* from constructors and the parse method.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected boolean allowEmpty = false;

/**
* Initialize flags that control parsing behavior,
* based on System properties described above in
* the class documentation.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
protected void initializeProperties()

The following additional System properties are defined corresponding to the last two fields
above:

mail.mime.multipart.ignoreexistingboundaryparameter:
Normally the boundary parameter in the Content-Type header of a multipart body part is
used to specify the separator between parts of the multipart body. This System property
may be set to ”true” to cause the parser to look for a line in the multipart body that
looks like a boundary line and use that value as the separator between subsequent parts.
This may be useful in cases where a broken anti-virus product has rewritten the message
incorrectly such that the boundary parameter and the actual boundary value no longer
match.
The default value of this property is false.

mail.mime.multipart.allowempty:

Normally, when writing out a MimeMultipart that contains no body parts, or when
trying to parse a multipart message with no body parts, a MessagingException is
thrown. The MIME spec does not allow multipart content with no body parts. This
System property may be set to ”true” to override this behavior. When writing out such
a MimeMultipart, a single empty part will be included. When reading such a
multipart, a MimeMultipart will be created with no body parts.
The default value of this property is false.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 143
Need simple way to override MIME type and encoding of attachment (55)

Need simple way to override MIME type and encoding of attachment

(55)
First, we define an interface that allows a DataSource to specify the Content-Transfer-
Encoding to use:

package javax.mail;

/**
* A {@link javax.activation.DataSource DataSource} that also implements
* <code>EncodingAware</code> may specify the Content-Transfer-Encoding
* to use for its data. Valid Content-Transfer-Encoding values specified
* by RFC 2045 are “7bit”, “8bit”, “quoted-printable”, “base64”, and
* “binary”.
* <p>
* For example, a {@link javax.activation.FileDataSource FileDataSource}
* could be created that forces all files to be base64 encoded: <p>
* <blockquote><pre>
* public class Base64FileDataSource extends FileDataSource
* implements EncodingAware {
* public Base64FileDataSource(File file) {
* super(file);
* }
*
* // implements EncodingAware.getEncoding()
* public String getEncoding() {
* return “base64”;
* }
* }
* </pre></blockquote><p>
*
* @since JavaMail 1.5
* @author Bill Shannon
*/

public interface EncodingAware {

/**
* Return the MIME Content-Transfer-Encoding to use for this data,
* or null to indicate that an appropriate value should be chosen
* by the caller.
*
* @return the Content-Transfer-Encoding value, or null
*/
public String getEncoding();
}

Then we add new methods to MimeBodyPart:

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

144 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5
Enable RFC 2231 support by default (56)

/**
* Use the specified file with the specified Content-Type and
* Content-Transfer-Encoding to provide the data for this part.
* If contentType or encoding are null, appropriate values will
* be chosen.
* The simple file name is used as the file name for this
* part and the data in the file is used as the data for this
* part. The disposition of this part is set to
* {@link Part#ATTACHMENT Part.ATTACHMENT}.
*
* @param file the File object to attach
* @param contentType the Content-Type, or null
* @param encoding the Content-Transfer-Encoding, or
null
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the
file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public void attachFile(File file, String contentType, String encoding)
throws IOException, MessagingException

/**
* Use the specified file with the specified Content-Type and
* Content-Transfer-Encoding to provide the data for this part.
* If contentType or encoding are null, appropriate values will
* be chosen.
* The simple file name is used as the file name for this
* part and the data in the file is used as the data for this
* part. The disposition of this part is set to
* {@link Part#ATTACHMENT Part.ATTACHMENT}.
*
* @param file the name of the file
* @param contentType the Content-Type, or null
* @param encoding the Content-Transfer-Encoding, or
null
* @exception IOException errors related to accessing the
file
* @exception MessagingException message related errors
* @since JavaMail 1.5
*/
public void attachFile(String file, String contentType, String
encoding)
throws IOException, MessagingException

Enable RFC 2231 support by default (56)

RFC 2231 support for encoded parameter values is now widely implemented, it’s time to
change the default to support this standard. Given the way RFC 2231 is defined, it’s
extremely unlikely that this would cause compatibility problems with existing applications.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5 145
Enable RFC 2231 support by default (56)

The System properties mail.mime.decodeparameters and

mail.mime.encodeparameters now default to true instead of false.

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

146 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.5
Enable RFC 2231 support by default (56)

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 147

Appendix K:

Features Added in JavaMail 1.6

This appendix summarizes the features that were added in JavaMail 1.6. Refer to the
appropriate Javadoc documentation for additional information about each item. The numbers
in parentheses are bug numbers; you can find more information about the bug reports at:
https://github.com/javaee/javamail/issues/<bug number>

MailSessionDefinition should use Repeatable annotation

for Java EE 8 (226)
The MailSessionDefinition annotation now includes the Repeatable annotation:

@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Repeatable(MailSessionDefinitions.class)
public @interface MailSessionDefinition {
...
}
The Repeatable annotation is not known to Java SE 7 and will be ignored (as expected)
when JavaMail 1.6 is used on Java SE 7.

MimeMessage.updateHeaders should set Date header if not

already set (77)
RFC 2822 requires a Date header. The MimeMessage.updateHeaders method now sets
the Date header if it's not already set:

/**
* Called by the <code>saveChanges</code> method to actually
* update the MIME headers. The implementation here sets the
* <code>Content-Transfer-Encoding</code> header (if needed
* and not already set), the <code>Date</code> header (if
* not already set), the <code>MIME-Version</code> header
* and the <code>Message-ID</code> header. Also, if the content
* of this message is a <code>MimeMultipart</code>, its
* <code>updateHeaders</code> method is called. <p>
*
* If the {@link #cachedContent} field is not null (that is,

JavaMail™ API Design Specification August 2017

148 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6
Update public API to use generics (232)

* it references a Multipart or Message object), then

* that object is used to set a new DataHandler, any
* stream data used to create this object is discarded,
* and the {@link #cachedContent} field is cleared.
*
* @exception IllegalWriteException if the underlying
* implementation does not support modification
* @exception IllegalStateException if this message is
* obtained from a READ_ONLY folder.
* @exception MessagingException for other failures
*/
protected synchronized void updateHeaders()
throws MessagingException {
...
}

Update public API to use generics (232)

Methods on the following APIs have been updated to use generics when appropriate:

javax.mail.Multipart
javax.mail.Part
javax.mail.Service
javax.mail.internet.InternetHeaders
javax.mail.internet.MimeBodyPart
javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage
javax.mail.internet.MimePart
javax.mail.internet.ParameterList

Details follow:

diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Multipart.java

--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Multipart.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Multipart.java
@@ -72,2 +72,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- protected Vector parts = new Vector(); // Holds BodyParts
+ protected Vector<BodyPart> parts = new Vector<>(); // Holds BodyParts
diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Part.java
--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Part.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Part.java
@@ -452,2 +452,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getAllHeaders() throws MessagingException;
+ public Enumeration<Header> getAllHeaders() throws MessagingException;
@@ -463,2 +462,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6 149
Update public API to use generics (232)

- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaders(String[] header_names)

+ public Enumeration<Header> getMatchingHeaders(String[] header_names)
@@ -475,2 +473,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaders(String[] header_names)
+ public Enumeration<Header> getNonMatchingHeaders(String[]
header_names)
diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Service.java
--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Service.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/Service.java
@@ -640,2 +640,2 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- protected void queueEvent(MailEvent event, Vector vector) {
+ protected void queueEvent(MailEvent event,
+ Vector<? extends EventListener> vector) {
diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/
InternetHeaders.java
--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/InternetHeaders.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/InternetHeaders.java
@@ -300,2 +300,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- protected List headers;
+ protected List<InternetHeader> headers;
@@ -589,2 +585,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings({"rawtypes", "unchecked"})
- public Enumeration getAllHeaders() {
+ public Enumeration<Header> getAllHeaders() {
@@ -600,2 +595,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings({"rawtypes", "unchecked"})
- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaders(String[] names) {
+ public Enumeration<Header> getMatchingHeaders(String[] names) {
@@ -611,2 +605,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings({"rawtypes", "unchecked"})
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaders(String[] names) {
+ public Enumeration<Header> getNonMatchingHeaders(String[] names) {
@@ -649,2 +640,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getAllHeaderLines() {
+ public Enumeration<String> getAllHeaderLines() {
@@ -660,2 +650,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings({"rawtypes", "unchecked"})
- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names) {
+ public Enumeration<String> getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names) {
@@ -671,2 +660,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings({"rawtypes", "unchecked"})
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names) {
+ public Enumeration<String> getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names) {
diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/
MimeBodyPart.java
--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/MimeBodyPart.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/MimeBodyPart.java
@@ -1036,2 +1036,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")

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150 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6
Update public API to use generics (232)

- public Enumeration getAllHeaders() throws MessagingException {

+ public Enumeration<Header> getAllHeaders() throws MessagingException {
@@ -1045,2 +1044,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<Header> getMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
@@ -1055,2 +1053,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<Header> getNonMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
@@ -1073,2 +1070,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getAllHeaderLines() throws MessagingException {
+ public Enumeration<String> getAllHeaderLines() throws
MessagingException {
@@ -1083,2 +1079,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<String> getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
@@ -1094,2 +1089,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<String> getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/
MimeMessage.java
--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/MimeMessage.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/MimeMessage.java
@@ -1992,2 +1991,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getAllHeaders() throws MessagingException {
+ public Enumeration<Header> getAllHeaders() throws MessagingException {
@@ -2004,2 +2002,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<Header> getMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
@@ -2017,2 +2014,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<Header> getNonMatchingHeaders(String[] names)
@@ -2043,2 +2039,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getAllHeaderLines() throws MessagingException {
+ public Enumeration<String> getAllHeaderLines() throws
MessagingException {
@@ -2055,2 +2050,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<String> getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
@@ -2068,2 +2062,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<String> getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/MimePart.java

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 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6 151
MailDateFormat changes for version 1.6 (174)

--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/MimePart.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/MimePart.java
@@ -111,2 +111,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getAllHeaderLines() throws MessagingException;
+ public Enumeration<String> getAllHeaderLines() throws
MessagingException;
@@ -123,2 +122,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<String> getMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
@@ -136,2 +134,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
+ public Enumeration<String> getNonMatchingHeaderLines(String[] names)
diff -r 1f6b2c17e291 mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/
ParameterList.java
--- a/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/ParameterList.java
+++ b/mail/src/main/java/javax/mail/internet/ParameterList.java
@@ -627,2 +627,1 @@
- @SuppressWarnings("rawtypes")
- public Enumeration getNames() {
+ public Enumeration<String> getNames() {

MailDateFormat changes for version 1.6 (174)

The parse(String) method currently returns null for invalid dates, which violates the
contract of DateFormat. It should throw ParseException.
Some methods of MailDateFormat throw UnsupportedOperationException. The
following methods should also do so:

/**
* This method always throws an UnsupportedOperationException and
* should not be used because RFC 2822 mandates a specific pattern.
*
* @throws UnsupportedOperationException if this method is invoked
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
@Override
public void applyLocalizedPattern(String pattern) {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Method "
+ "applyLocalizedPattern() shouldn't be called");
}

/**
* This method always throws an UnsupportedOperationException and
* should not be used because RFC 2822 mandates a specific pattern.

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152 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6
MailDateFormat changes for version 1.6 (174)

*
* @throws UnsupportedOperationException if this method is invoked
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
@Override
public void applyPattern(String pattern) {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Method "
+ "applyPattern() shouldn't be called");
}

/**
* This method always throws an UnsupportedOperationException and
* should not be used because RFC 2822 mandates another strategy
* for interpreting 2-digits years.
*
* @return the start of the 100-year period into which two digit
* years are parsed
* @throws UnsupportedOperationException if this method is invoked
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
@Override
public Date get2DigitYearStart() {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Method "
+ "get2DigitYearStart() shouldn't be called");
}

/**
* This method always throws an UnsupportedOperationException and
* should not be used because RFC 2822 mandates another strategy
* for interpreting 2-digits years.
*
* @throws UnsupportedOperationException if this method is invoked
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
@Override
public void set2DigitYearStart(Date startDate) {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Method "
+ "set2DigitYearStart() shouldn't be called");
}

/**
* This method always throws an UnsupportedOperationException and
* should not be used because RFC 2822 mandates specific date
* format symbols.
*
* @throws UnsupportedOperationException if this method is invoked
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
@Override
public void setDateFormatSymbols(
DateFormatSymbols newFormatSymbols) {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Method "
+ "setDateFormatSymbols() shouldn't be called");

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 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6 153
Store, Transport, and Folder should implement AutoCloseable (159)

MailDateFormat should include a proper clone method:

/**
* Overrides Cloneable.
*
* @return a clone of this instance
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
@Override
public MailDateFormat clone() {
return (MailDateFormat) super.clone();
}

Store, Transport, and Folder should implement

AutoCloseable (159)
To enable use in a try-with-resources block, the Store, Transport, and Folder classes
should implement the java.lang.AutoCloseable interface. Store and Transport
are subclasses of Service, which already has the required close() method, so having
Service implement AutoCloseable is sufficient. The Folder class includes a close
method with a required expunge parameter so we add a new close() method with no
parameter that behaves the same as close(true), and have Folder implement
AutoCloseable.

public abstract class Service implements AutoCloseable {

...
}

public abstract class Folder implements AutoCloseable {

...

/**
* Close this Folder and expunge deleted messages. <p>
*
* A CLOSED ConnectionEvent is delivered to any ConnectionListeners
* registered on this Folder. Note that the folder is closed even
* if this method terminates abnormally by throwing a
* MessagingException. <p>
*
* This method supports the {@link java.lang.AutoCloseable AutoCloseable}
* interface. <p>
*

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154 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6
The UIDFolder interface should have a getter for UIDNEXT (104)

* This implementation calls <code>close(true)</code>.

*
* @exception IllegalStateException if this folder is not opened
* @exception MessagingException for other failures
* @see javax.mail.event.ConnectionEvent
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
@Override
public void close() throws MessagingException {
close(true);
}
}

The UIDFolder interface should have a getter for UIDNEXT (104)

The UIDFolder interface models the UID support in the IMAP protocol. After UIDFolder
was originally created, the IMAP protocol added support for getting the value of the next UID
that will be assigned. The IMAP provider in JavaMail has supported this for quite some time;
it should be added to the UIDFolder interface:

/**
* Returns the predicted UID that will be assigned to the
* next message that is appended to this folder.
* Messages might be appended to the folder after this value
* is retrieved, causing this value to be out of date.
* This value might only be updated when a folder is first opened.
* Note that messages may have been appended to the folder
* while it was open and thus this value may be out of
* date. <p>
*
* If the value is unknown, -1 is returned. <p>
*
* @return the UIDNEXT value, or -1 if unknown
* @exception MessagingException for failures
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public long getUIDNext() throws MessagingException;

Ideally this new method added to the interface would include a default implementation to
provide compatibility with existing classes that implement this method. However, since the
JavaMail 1.6 reference implementation targets Java SE 7, this is not possible. It's very likely
that the only class implementing this interface is the IMAPFolder class in the JavaMail
reference implementation, thus this incompatibility is extremely unlikely to cause a problem in
practice.

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6 155
The UIDFolder interface should have a MAXUID constant (244)

The UIDFolder interface should have a MAXUID constant (244)

An IMAP UID is a 32-bit unsigned integer and is represented as a Java long. A new constant
indicates the maximum value of a UID:

/**
* The largest value possible for a UID, a 32-bit unsigned integer.
* This can be used to fetch all new messages by keeping track of the
* last UID that was seen and using:
* <blockquote><pre>
*
* Folder f = store.getFolder("whatever");
* UIDFolder uf = (UIDFolder)f;
* Message[] newMsgs =
* uf.getMessagesByUID(lastSeenUID + 1, UIDFolder.MAXUID);
*
* </pre></blockquote><p>
*
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public static final long MAXUID = 0xffffffffL;

MimeMultipart should throw ParseException for parsing

errors (75)
ParseException indicates an error parsing MIME messages. In addition to applying to
MIME headers, it seems reasonable to expand it to cover multipart message parsing. Since
ParseException is a subclass of MessagingException, it merely reports more
precisely the cause of the error.
The description of ParseException is changed to:

* The exception thrown due to an error in parsing RFC822

* or MIME headers, including multipart bodies.

MimeMultipart documents that ParseException can be thrown from an existing

constructor and method:

/**
* Constructs a MimeMultipart object and its bodyparts from the
* given DataSource. <p>
*
* This constructor handles as a special case the situation where the
* given DataSource is a MultipartDataSource object. In this case, this
* method just invokes the superclass (i.e., Multipart) constructor
* that takes a MultipartDataSource object. <p>
*

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156 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6
Support addressing i18n via RFC 6530/6531/6532 (93)

* Otherwise, the DataSource is assumed to provide a MIME multipart

* byte stream. The <code>parsed</code> flag is set to false. When
* the data for the body parts are needed, the parser extracts the
* "boundary" parameter from the content type of this DataSource,
* skips the 'preamble' and reads bytes till the terminating
* boundary and creates MimeBodyParts for each part of the stream.
*
* @param ds DataSource, can be a MultipartDataSource
* @exception ParseException for failures parsing the message
* @exception MessagingException for other failures
*/
public MimeMultipart(DataSource ds) throws MessagingException

...

/**
* Parse the InputStream from our DataSource, constructing the
* appropriate MimeBodyParts. The <code>parsed</code> flag is
* set to true, and if true on entry nothing is done. This
* method is called by all other methods that need data for
* the body parts, to make sure the data has been parsed.
* The {@link #initializeProperties} method is called before
* parsing the data.
*
* @exception ParseException for failures parsing the message
* @exception MessagingException for other failures
* @since JavaMail 1.2
*/
protected synchronized void parse() throws MessagingException

Support addressing i18n via RFC 6530/6531/6532 (93)

To enable support for UTF-8 email addresses, the following methods are added to
InternetAddress:

/**
* Convert the given array of InternetAddress objects into
* a comma separated sequence of address strings. The
* resulting string contains Unicode characters. <p>
*
* @param addresses array of InternetAddress objects
* @exception ClassCastException if any address object in the
* given array is not an InternetAddress object.
* Note that this is a RuntimeException.
* @return comma separated string of addresses
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public static String toUnicodeString(Address[] addresses)

/**

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6 157
Support addressing i18n via RFC 6530/6531/6532 (93)

* Convert the given array of InternetAddress objects into

* a comma separated sequence of address strings. The
* resulting string contains Unicode characters. <p>
*
* The 'used' parameter specifies the number of character positions
* already taken up in the field into which the resulting address
* sequence string is to be inserted. It is used to determine the
* line-break positions in the resulting address sequence string.
*
* @param addresses array of InternetAddress objects
* @param used number of character positions already used, in
* the field into which the address string is to
* be inserted.
* @exception ClassCastException if any address object in the
* given array is not an InternetAddress object.
* Note that this is a RuntimeException.
* @return comma separated string of addresses
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public static String toUnicodeString(Address[] addresses, int used)

The following constructor and method are added to InternetHeaders:

/**
* Read and parse the given RFC822 message stream till the
* blank line separating the header from the body. The input
* stream is left positioned at the start of the body. The
* header lines are stored internally. <p>
*
* For efficiency, wrap a BufferedInputStream around the actual
* input stream and pass it as the parameter. <p>
*
* No placeholder entries are inserted; the original order of
* the headers is preserved.
*
* @param is RFC822 input stream
* @param allowutf8 if UTF-8 encoded headers are allowed
* @exception MessagingException for any I/O error reading the stream
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public InternetHeaders(InputStream is, boolean allowutf8)
throws MessagingException

/**
* Read and parse the given RFC822 message stream till the
* blank line separating the header from the body. Store the
* header lines inside this InternetHeaders object. The order
* of header lines is preserved. <p>
*
* Note that the header lines are added into this InternetHeaders

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158 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6
Look for resource files in <java.home>/conf on JDK 1.9 (247)

* object, so any existing headers in this object will not be

* affected. Headers are added to the end of the existing list
* of headers, in order.
*
* @param is RFC822 input stream
* @param allowutf8 if UTF-8 encoded headers are allowed
* @exception MessagingException for any I/O error reading the stream
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public void load(InputStream is, boolean allowutf8)
throws MessagingException

The following Session property can be set to enable implicit use of these new methods:

mail.mime.allowutf8:

If set to "true", UTF-8 strings are allowed in message headers,

e.g., in addresses. This should only be set if the mail server also
supports UTF-8.

Look for resource files in <java.home>/conf on JDK 1.9 (247)

JDK 1.9 adds a new <java.home>/conf directory to hold configuration files that were
previously stored in <java.home>/lib. When using JavaMail on JDK 1.9, it should look for
its (optional) configuration files in the <java.home>/conf directory.
The specification of the Session class is changed as follows:

/**
* The Session class represents a mail session and is not subclassed.
* It collects together properties and defaults used by the mail API's.
* A single default session can be shared by multiple applications on
* the desktop. Unshared sessions can also be created. <p>
*
* The Session class provides access to the protocol providers that
* implement the <code>Store</code>, <code>Transport</code>, and related
* classes. The protocol providers are configured using the following
* files:
* <ul>
* <li> <code>javamail.providers</code> and
* <code>javamail.default.providers</code> </li>
* <li> <code>javamail.address.map</code> and
* <code>javamail.default.address.map</code> </li>
* </ul>
* <p>
* Each <code>javamail.</code><i>X</i> resource file is searched for
* using three methods in the following order:

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification

 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6 159
Flags convenience methods (249)

* <ol>
* <li> <code><i>java.home</i>/<i>conf</i>/javamail.</code><i>X</i> </li>
* <li> <code>META-INF/javamail.</code><i>X</i> </li>
* <li> <code>META-INF/javamail.default.</code><i>X</i> </li>
* </ol>
* <p>
* (Where <i>java.home</i> is the value of the "java.home" System
* property and <i>conf</i> is the directory named "conf" if it exists,
* otherwise the directory named "lib"; the "conf" directory was
* introduced in JDK 1.9.)
* <p>
* The first method allows the user to include their own version of the
* resource file by placing it in the <i>conf</i> directory where the
* <code>java.home</code> property points. The second method allows an
* application that uses the JavaMail APIs to include their own resource
* files in their application's or jar file's <code>META-INF</code>
* directory. The <code>javamail.default.</code><i>X</i> default files
* are part of the JavaMail <code>mail.jar</code> file and should not be
* supplied by users. <p>

Flags convenience methods (249)

When copying messages from one server to another, it's sometimes necessary to adjust the
message flags based on the capabilities of the target server. It would be convenient if the Flags
class had methods to clear any flags not supported by the target server, to clear all user flags,
and to clear all system flags.

/**
* Remove any flags <strong>not</strong> in the given Flags object.
* Useful for clearing flags not supported by a server. If the
* given Flags object includes the Flags.Flag.USER flag, all user
* flags in this Flags object are retained.
*
* @param f the flags to keep
* @return true if this Flags object changed
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public boolean retainAll(Flags f)

/**
* Clear all of the system flags.
*
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public void clearSystemFlags()

/**
* Clear all of the user flags.

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160 Appendix J: Features Added in JavaMail 1.6
Flags convenience methods (249)

*
* @since JavaMail 1.6
*/
public void clearUserFlags()

August 2017 JavaMail™ API Design Specification