Sending email with Javamail via imap

emailimapjakarta-mail

The convention with using JavaMail seems to be:
— Use smtp for sending emails
— Use imap (or pop) for reading emails ..

For our applications purposes, I reckon it is more useful to use an email client protocol (imap specifically) to send emails .. and ensure copies of all sent mail make into the 'Sent' folder of gmail or whatever mail account used.

Note, the primary point of the email connection is just to send mails, not to read or poll emails.

Would like opinions/suggestions/examples from others who have used imap for sending emails from their java apps. All posts appreciated.

Best Answer

Simple answer: It is not possible to send emails with IMAP. You have to use SMTP for sending emails.

More precisely there are some extensions to combine sending and retrieval operations. However, as far as I know, these extensions are not widely spread - neither on the client nor on the server side.

See also the article on wikipedia about IMAP (IMAP#Disadvantages):

Unlike some proprietary protocols which combine sending and retrieval operations, sending a message and saving a copy in a server-side folder with a base-level IMAP client requires transmitting the message content twice, once to SMTP for delivery and a second time to IMAP to store in a sent mail folder. This is remedied by a set of extensions ...

Related Solutions

C# – Sending email in .NET through Gmail

Be sure to use System.Net.Mail, not the deprecated System.Web.Mail. Doing SSL with System.Web.Mail is a gross mess of hacky extensions.

using System.Net;
using System.Net.Mail;

var fromAddress = new MailAddress("from@gmail.com", "From Name");
var toAddress = new MailAddress("to@example.com", "To Name");
const string fromPassword = "fromPassword";
const string subject = "Subject";
const string body = "Body";

var smtp = new SmtpClient
{
    Host = "smtp.gmail.com",
    Port = 587,
    EnableSsl = true,
    DeliveryMethod = SmtpDeliveryMethod.Network,
    UseDefaultCredentials = false,
    Credentials = new NetworkCredential(fromAddress.Address, fromPassword)
};
using (var message = new MailMessage(fromAddress, toAddress)
{
    Subject = subject,
    Body = body
})
{
    smtp.Send(message);
}

Additionally go to the Google Account > Security page and look at the Signing in to Google > 2-Step Verification setting.

If it is enabled, then you have to generate a password allowing .NET to bypass the 2-Step Verification. To do this, click on Signing in to Google > App passwords, select app = Mail, and device = Windows Computer, and finally generate the password. Use the generated password in the fromPassword constant instead of your standard Gmail password.
If it is disabled, then you have to turn on Less secure app access, which is not recommended! So better enable the 2-Step verification.

Javascript – How to validate an email address in JavaScript

Using regular expressions is probably the best way. You can see a bunch of tests here (taken from chromium)

function validateEmail(email) {
    const re = /^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@"]+)*)|(".+"))@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$/;
    return re.test(String(email).toLowerCase());
}

Here's the example of regular expresion that accepts unicode:

const re = /^(([^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@(([^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]+\.)+[^<>()[\]\.,;:\s@\"]{2,})$/i;

But keep in mind that one should not rely only upon JavaScript validation. JavaScript can easily be disabled. This should be validated on the server side as well.

Here's an example of the above in action:

function validateEmail(email) {
  const re = /^(([^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+(\.[^<>()[\]\\.,;:\s@\"]+)*)|(\".+\"))@((\[[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\.[0-9]{1,3}\])|(([a-zA-Z\-0-9]+\.)+[a-zA-Z]{2,}))$/;
  return re.test(email);
}

function validate() {
  const $result = $("#result");
  const email = $("#email").val();
  $result.text("");

  if (validateEmail(email)) {
    $result.text(email + " is valid :)");
    $result.css("color", "green");
  } else {
    $result.text(email + " is not valid :(");
    $result.css("color", "red");
  }
  return false;
}

$("#email").on("input", validate);

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

<label for=email>Enter an email address:</label>
<input id="email">
<h2 id="result"></h2>

Best Answer

Related Solutions

C# – Sending email in .NET through Gmail

Javascript – How to validate an email address in JavaScript

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