JavaMail API - Authentication

In the previous chapters Checking Emails and Fetching Emails, we passed authorization credentials (user ad password) along with host, when connecting to store of your mailbox. Instead we can configure the Properties to have the host, and tell the Session about your custom Authenticator instance. This is shown in the example below:

Create Java Class

We will modify our CheckingMails.java from the chapter Checking Emails. Its contents are as below:

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.util.Properties;

import javax.mail.Authenticator;
import javax.mail.Folder;
import javax.mail.Message;
import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.NoSuchProviderException;
import javax.mail.PasswordAuthentication;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.Store;

public class CheckingMails {

   public static void check(String host, String storeType, String user,
      String password) 
   {
      try {

      // create properties field
      Properties properties = new Properties();

      properties.put("mail.pop3s.host", host);
      properties.put("mail.pop3s.port", "995");
      properties.put("mail.pop3s.starttls.enable", "true");

      // Setup authentication, get session
      Session emailSession = Session.getInstance(properties,
         new javax.mail.Authenticator() {
            protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
               return new PasswordAuthentication(
                  "manisha@gmail.com", "manisha123");
            }
         });
      // emailSession.setDebug(true);

      // create the POP3 store object and connect with the pop server
      Store store = emailSession.getStore("pop3s");

      store.connect();

      // create the folder object and open it
      Folder emailFolder = store.getFolder("INBOX");
      emailFolder.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);

      // retrieve the messages from the folder in an array and print it
      Message[] messages = emailFolder.getMessages();
      System.out.println("messages.length---" + messages.length);

      for (int i = 0, n = messages.length; i < n; i++) {
         Message message = messages[i];
         System.out.println("---------------------------------");
         System.out.println("Email Number " + (i + 1));
         System.out.println("Subject: " + message.getSubject());
         System.out.println("From: " + message.getFrom()[0]);
         System.out.println("Text: " + message.getContent().toString());
      }

      // close the store and folder objects
      emailFolder.close(false);
      store.close();

      } catch (NoSuchProviderException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (MessagingException e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (Exception e) {
         e.printStackTrace();
      }
   }

   public static void main(String[] args) {

      String host = "pop.gmail.com";// change accordingly
      String mailStoreType = "pop3";
      String username = "abc@gmail.com";// change accordingly
      String password = "*****";// change accordingly

      check(host, mailStoreType, username, password);

   }

}

You can set the debug on by uncommenting the statement emailSession.setDebug(true);

Compile and Run

Now that our class is ready, let us compile the above class. I've saved the class CheckingMails.java to directory : /home/manisha/JavaMailAPIExercise. We would need the jars javax.mail.jar and activation.jar in the classpath. Execute the command below to compile the class (both the jars are placed in /home/manisha/ directory) from command prompt:

javac -cp /home/manisha/activation.jar:/home/manisha/javax.mail.jar: CheckingMails.java

Now that the class is compiled, execute the below command to run:

java -cp /home/manisha/activation.jar:/home/manisha/javax.mail.jar: CheckingMails

Verify Output

You can see a similar message as below on the command console:

messages.length---3
---------------------------------
Email Number 1
Subject: Today is a nice day
From: XYZ <xyz@gmail.com>
Text: javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart@45f676cb
---------------------------------
Email Number 2
Subject: hiiii....
From: XYZ <xyz@gmail.com>
Text: javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart@37f12d4f
---------------------------------
Email Number 3
Subject: helloo
From: XYZ <xyz@gmail.com>
Text: javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart@3ad5ba3a