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I've been searching for the best way to send an e-mail with an attachment by my java application. I want to use this as an users bug report with logger files. The recipient should be my own e-mail address. I'd prefer the use of an e-mail client.

I tried the following:

  • Send an e-mail with user authentification like this. I don't want to use this, because the user would need to reveal his e-mail account and password. Furthermore, I'd have to set the properties for every e-mail adress, which is impossible.

  • Send an e-mail directly to my own e-mail address like this in Listing 16.16 (didnt found an english example). The problem is every e-mail server is using POP authentification nowadays, that means the recipient e-mail server won't accept my e-mail.

  • Using the mailto URL syntax like this. Doesn't work aswell, because the attachment function isn't working properly in every e-mail client. Best solution so far is to brief the user to add the attachment by himself, after I would put it to his desktop. Or upload the data and add a link to the e-mail body.

  • The last way I've found is this one. As you could assume this won't work either, because the localhost needs to be connected to the internet and capable enough to send an e-mail.

Hopefully I explained my problem well enough. Is there a different way to send bug reports?

Steckdoserich
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1 Answers1

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The generally accepted way to get around the problems you describe is to keep all the email logic server side, and then have your application call a web service with the appropriate parameters. It's pretty easy to knock a PHP script / servlet up that will do the job and then send the results on via email, put them in a mysql database or so on.

However, if you can't / don't want to / won't keep this server side, I'd recommend using JavaMail to create a MimeMessage, then using writeTo() to write this to an EML file.

You can then do the usual:

Desktop.getDesktop().open(emlFile);

...which will open the EML file with the default application for handing those files, which is almost always the mail client. Still not foolproof, but if you're determined on sending the email from the client directly I think that's as good as you'll get.

Michael Berry
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  • thank you @berry120 for your advice to use eml files. I searched how to create one and found [this](http://stackoverflow.com/a/13136614/1754625). After I opened the .eml file I can't send it. It's more like a template and not a new message. For example after opening the eml file with thunderbird I have to "message->edit message as new" to send it. – Steckdoserich Jan 23 '13 at 14:10
  • @Steckdoserich I think this depends on the mail client - I'm pretty sure when I've opened it with outlook it fires right up. Hence, not foolproof unfortunately, but I think without using something you have control over server side to do the heavy lifting, you're not going to get much in the way of foolproof *and* easy to set up (filling in a load of SMTP parameters would work of course if done correctly, but no user will do that just to send a bug report, they might as well type it by hand!) – Michael Berry Jan 23 '13 at 14:16