Thread: Application reading a Gmail message with Javamail?

Greetings, and thank you for stopping by!

I'm working on a application in Java which needs to be able to send and retrieve Gmails, and depending on the received information possibly store some of it. It can already send Gmails properly, and I've been able to make the program look for undread Gmails and start reading them. I can read stuff like the subject, the date it was sent and retrieved, who sent it and the like, but for some reason retrieving the actual information within the Gmail seems to be really difficult.

This is the current code I'm using to retrieve a Gmail:

import java.io.BufferedInputStream;
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.io.StringWriter;
import java.util.*;
 
import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.search.FlagTerm;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;
 
import org.apache.poi.util.IOUtils;
 
@SuppressWarnings("unused")
public class MailRetrieveMail {
 
 
 
 
	public void retrieveMail()
	{
 
		Properties props = System.getProperties();
		props.setProperty("mail.store.protocol", "imaps");
		try 
		{
		  Session session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, null);
		  Store store = session.getStore("imaps");
		  store.connect("imap.gmail.com", "SomeMail@gmail.com", "somePassword");
		  Folder inbox = store.getFolder("Inbox");
 
		  inbox.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);
		  Message messages[] = inbox.search(new FlagTerm(new Flags(Flags.Flag.SEEN), false));
 
		  JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Number of undread messages: " + messages.length);
 
		  FetchProfile fetchProfile = new FetchProfile();
 
		  fetchProfile.add(FetchProfile.Item.ENVELOPE);
		  fetchProfile.add(FetchProfile.Item.CONTENT_INFO);
 
		  inbox.fetch(messages, fetchProfile);
 
		  try
		  {
			printAllMessages(messages);
 
			inbox.close(true);
			store.close();
 
		  }catch(Exception ex)
		  {
			  JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Exception when reading email.");
			  ex.printStackTrace();
		  }
 
		} catch (NoSuchProviderException e) 
		{
		  e.printStackTrace();
		  System.exit(1);
		} catch (MessagingException e) 
		{
		  e.printStackTrace();
		  System.exit(2);
		}
	}
 
 
    public void printAllMessages(Message[] messages) throws Exception
 
    {
 
        for (int i = 0; i < messages.length; i++)
        {
 
            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "MESSAGE #" + (i + 1) + ":");
 
            printEnvelope(messages[i]);
        }
    }
 
 
    public void printEnvelope(Message message) throws Exception
 
    {
 
        Address[] a;
 
 
        if ((a = message.getFrom()) != null) {
            for (int j = 0; j < a.length; j++) {
            }
        }
        if ((a = message.getRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO)) != null) {
            for (int j = 0; j < a.length; j++) {
            }
        }
        String subject = message.getSubject();
        String content = message.getContent().toString();
 
        Date receivedDate = message.getReceivedDate();
 
 
        System.out.println("Subject: " + subject);
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Subject: " + subject);
        if (receivedDate != null) {
//        	JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Received Date: " + receivedDate.toString());
        }
//        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Sent Date: " + sentDate.toString());
 
        getContent(message);
 
    }
 
    public void getContent(Message msg)
 
    {
        try {
//            String contentType = msg.getContentType();
//            JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Content Type : " + contentType);
            Multipart mp = (Multipart) msg.getContent();
            int count = mp.getCount();
            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
                dumpPart(mp.getBodyPart(i));
            }
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            System.out.println("Exception arise at get Content");
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
 
 
	public void dumpPart(Part p) throws Exception {
        // Dump input stream ..
        InputStream inputStream = p.getInputStream();
        // If "is" is not already buffered, wrap a BufferedInputStream
        // around it.
        if (!(inputStream instanceof BufferedInputStream)) {
        	inputStream = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
        }
        int c;
        String k = "";
 
        byte bg[];
//        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Message : ");
        while ((c = inputStream.read()) != -1) {
            System.out.write(c);
 
        }
 
 
 
 
        String inputStreamString = readFully(inputStream, "UTF-8");
 
 
 
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "inputStream: " + inputStreamString);
 
//        BufferedReader bufferRead = new BufferedReader(new Reader(System.out));
//	    String s = bufferRead.readLine();
 
//        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "s: " + s);
 
    }
 
	public String readFully(InputStream inputStream, String encoding)
	        throws IOException {
	    return new String(readFully(inputStream), encoding);
	}    
 
	private byte[] readFully(InputStream inputStream)
	        throws IOException {
	    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
	    byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
	    int length = 0;
	    while ((length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
	        baos.write(buffer, 0, length);
	    }
	    return baos.toByteArray();
	}
 
}

Now somehow this part works and prints out the correct value into the console:

        int c;
        while ((c = inputStream.read()) != -1) {
            System.out.write(c);
 
        }

But I can't for the mind of me figure out how to convert it to a readable String that I can actually use.


This part:

        String inputStreamString = readFully(inputStream, "UTF-8");
 
 
 
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "inputStream: " + inputStreamString);
 
 
 
    }
 
	public String readFully(InputStream inputStream, String encoding)
	        throws IOException {
	    return new String(readFully(inputStream), encoding);
	}    
 
	private byte[] readFully(InputStream inputStream)
	        throws IOException {
	    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
	    byte[] buffer = new byte[1024];
	    int length = 0;
	    while ((length = inputStream.read(buffer)) != -1) {
	        baos.write(buffer, 0, length);
	    }
	    return baos.toByteArray();
	}

Is just another failed attempt, it too just prints it to the console and doesn't return any visible value at all that I can use. It also doesn't filter out all the non-interesting stuff unlike the example above it.

I've searched around a lot and seen lots of solutions presented, but either I didn't get them to work or they simply printed it to the console, I'm sure this is a fairly easy thing to and probably often asked but, I'm stuck all the same.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! =)

I'm afraid I don't quite follow what you mean, but I fooled around a bit with it using a byte array and I think I got the result I needed:

        InputStream inputStream = p.getInputStream();
        if (!(inputStream instanceof BufferedInputStream)) {
        	inputStream = new BufferedInputStream(inputStream);
        }
        int c;
 
        byte[] byteArray = new byte[90000000];
        int byteCounter = 0;
        while ((c = inputStream.read()) != -1) {
            System.out.write(c);
            byteArray[byteCounter] = (byte) c;
            byteCounter++;
        }
 
        byte[] realByteArray = new byte[byteCounter];
        for(int i = 0; i < byteCounter; i++)
        {
        	realByteArray[i] = byteArray[i];
        }
 
        String message = new String(realByteArray);
 
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "...: " + message);
        byteCounter = 0;

Does this look like an ok way to go, or is there a better way of doing it?

Your code doesn't seem to handle the various possible message content types. I'd say the first thing to do would be to do away with the JOptionPane.showMessageDialog calls as they get in the way of displaying the output, and just use printlns.

Study the example at JavaMail API Fetching Emails. The key method in the example is the writePart(Part p) method that treats the Message object as a Part type that can contain further Parts (e.g., in the case of a multipart message.) Always test the Part's MIME type (using isMimeType()), and in the case of a multipart, recursively call the writePart method, which in turn will further test the part's MIME type for proper handling.