Unable to read email content using Java

Question

Properties props = new Properties();
props.setProperty("mail.store.protocol", "imaps");
try {
Session session = Session.getInstance(props, null);
Store store = session.getStore();
store.connect("imap.gmail.com", "xxx", "xxx");
Folder inbox = store.getFolder("INBOX");
inbox.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);
Message[] messages = inbox.getMessages();
for (int i = messages.length;i>=0; i--) {
Message message =messages[i];

System.out.println("Text: " + message.getContent().toString());
}

I am able to read emails and I am trying to get email content for each email.However getContent method returns junk value eg:(Text:javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart@17ff24f). How do I get complete email content. Please help.

It seems you are getting a buffered stream of the mail content. — Suresh Atta, Aug 14 '15 at 07:36
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13474705/reading-body-part-of-a-mime-multipart — Jishnu Prathap, Aug 14 '15 at 07:39

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 14 '15 at 07:45

The call to message.getContent() doesn't return "junk value", it just returns something that cannot be directly converted into a String value.

That is because it's an object of class MimeMultipart. This means the email you're reading consists of multiple 'parts'. You can downcast the result of message.getContent() to a MimeMultipart variable and analyse it:

MimeMultipart multipart = (MimeMultipart) message.getContent();
System.out.println("This message consists of " + multipart.getCount() + " parts");
for (int i = 0; i < multipart.getCount(); i++) {
    // Note we're downcasting here, MimeBodyPart is the only subclass
    // of BodyPart available in the Java EE spec.
    MimeBodyPart bodyPart = (MimeBodyPart) multipart.getBodyPart(i); 

    System.out.println("Part " + i + " has type " + bodyPart.getContentType());
    System.out.println("Part " + i " + has filename " + bodyPart.getFileName()); // if it was an attachment
    // So on, so forth.
}

See the Javadoc of MimeBodyPart for details on how to analyse the parts of the message.

Unable to read email content using Java

1 Answers1