Sending mail from Java

October 9, 2007

The Java Mail API provides support for sending and receiving electronic mail messages. The API provides a plug-in architecture where vendor’s implementation for their own proprietary protocols can be dynamically discovered and used at the run time. Sun provides a reference implementation and its supports the following protocols namely,

Internet Mail Access Protocol (IMAP)
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)
Post Office Protocol 3(POP 3)

In this tip, let us see how to send mail using the Java Mail API. Following is the complete code listing for sending a mail from a Java Application,

SendMail.java

package tips.mails;
 
import java.util.Properties;
 
import javax.mail.Message;
import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.Transport;
import javax.mail.Message.RecipientType;
import javax.mail.internet.AddressException;
import javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
 
public class SendMail {
 
	private String from;
	private String to;
	private String subject;
	private String text;
 
	public SendMail(String from, String to, String subject, String text){
		this.from = from;
		this.to = to;
		this.subject = subject;
		this.text = text;
	}
 
	public void send(){
 
		Properties props = new Properties();
		props.put("mail.smtp.host", "smtp.gmail.com");
		props.put("mail.smtp.port", "465");
 
		Session mailSession = Session.getDefaultInstance(props);
		Message simpleMessage = new MimeMessage(mailSession);
 
		InternetAddress fromAddress = null;
		InternetAddress toAddress = null;
		try {
			fromAddress = new InternetAddress(from);
			toAddress = new InternetAddress(to);
		} catch (AddressException e) {
			// TODO Auto-generated catch block
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
 
		try {
			simpleMessage.setFrom(fromAddress);
			simpleMessage.setRecipient(RecipientType.TO, toAddress);
			simpleMessage.setSubject(subject);
			simpleMessage.setText(text);
 
			Transport.send(simpleMessage);
		} catch (MessagingException e) {
			// TODO Auto-generated catch block
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
	}
}

The above program accepts the sender, receiver, subject and the data in its constructor. After giving this information, the mail can be sent by calling the SendMail.send() method. Let us have a deeper look into the implementation of this method.

The first thing is that a Mail Session has to be established with some properties for sending or receiving a mail. The mandatory property is the server name. In the above code, we have given the SMTP Mail server of Google. Then, it is optional to provide the port information, and it is needed if it is different from the default port of 25. Then we construct a Message object for the Mail session by populating the information like sender, receiver, subject and text. Then the message is sent by calling the Transport.send() method.

Let us test the above code by writing a simple test class which is given below,

SendMailTest.java

package tips.mails;
 
public class SendMailTest {
 
	public static void main(String[] args) {
 
		String from = "abc@gmail.com";
		String to = "xyz@gmail.com";
		String subject = "Test";
		String message = "A test message";
 
		SendMail sendMail = new SendMail(from, to, subject, message);
		sendMail.send();
	}
}

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11 Responses to “Sending mail from Java”

Sai Says:
April 2, 2012 at 12:17 pm
how a mail will be sent without any credentials. i mean there is no need of entering the gmail password?

Reply
- suthukrish Says:
  April 3, 2012 at 5:32 am
  It is only the example program to send the mail. We need not have the server to setup for sending the mails. Is it your doubts?
  
  Reply
- suthukrish Says:
  April 12, 2012 at 9:54 am
  HI Sai,
  
  There is no need for the password, basically it is for only sending the mail. Why do you need gmail password, you are not going to login to your gmail. The receiver will receive as from address as your gmail address. But, it is not sent from the GMail server (Using your gmail account).
  
  Is it clear now?
  
  Thanks,
  Krishna
  
  Reply
akhil Says:
April 5, 2012 at 7:41 pm
it cannot work with yahoo or rediffmail .com username pls help me

Reply
rupali Says:
May 2, 2012 at 9:42 am
when i tried it i got run time exception
Exception in thread main java.lang.classformaterror : absent code attribute in methos is that is not native or abstract in class file javax/mail/internet/AddressException
at
java.lang.classloader.defineclass1<native method>

need help

Reply
Hamza Says:
May 10, 2012 at 2:01 am
it doesn’t work 4 me do i need setup 4 server ? help me plz

Reply
avishel Says:
May 11, 2012 at 11:21 am
This doesnt work man.

Reply
avishel Says:
May 11, 2012 at 11:22 am
well \n this \n is \n difficult \n to \n implement.

Reply
Hamza Says:
May 12, 2012 at 11:47 pm
i found it and i did a tuto to send mail with java

Reply
Rashmi Says:
May 23, 2012 at 6:10 am
When I run this program I am getting Exception in thread “main” java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/sun/mail/util/LineInputStream…help me plz

Reply
- Hamza Says:
  May 23, 2012 at 10:59 am
  @Rashmi what’s ur mail adress to send u the tuto
  
  Reply