Library To Access POP3 Server

Chryzmo · 04-29-2007, 10:00 PM

Hey all,

I wanted to create a little program that will sit on my desktop or in my taskbar and periodically check to see if I have any new messages in my school inbox.

I was wondering if there might be a library for Java or C++ that would allow me to easily interface with a POP3 e-mail server to determine if there are any messages waiting?

Thanks,
chryzmo

haxpor · 04-30-2007, 04:00 AM

For Java, it's in 'javax.mail' and also 'javax.activation'. You can find API Doc for it for easy, try to go and search through www.sun.com.

For C++, I dont know it has or not but you can do another way by Programming with Socket API, which actually it's used to send data between hosts but with specific Data Header.(Something like HTTP, such as => Content-Type: text/html\r\n) This make you go to look in rfc doc, http://www.ietf.org.

cfaj · 04-30-2007, 07:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chryzmo

Hey all,

I wanted to create a little program that will sit on my desktop or in my taskbar and periodically check to see if I have any new messages in my school inbox.

I was wondering if there might be a library for Java or C++ that would allow me to easily interface with a POP3 e-mail server to determine if there are any messages waiting?

You can do it with a shell script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

user=poppy
passwd=dadsepee
image=$HOME/pics/envelope.jpg
host=mail.somewhere.com
port=110

while :
do
  sleep 60 &
  delay=$!

  CR=$'\r'                            ## carriage return; for removal of
  exec 3<>/dev/tcp/$host/$port        ## connect to POP3 server, port 110
  read ok line <&3                    ## get response from server
  [ "${ok%$CR}" != "+OK" ] && exit 5  ## check that it succeeded
  echo user "$user" >&3               ## send user name
  read ok line <&3                    ## get response
  [ "${ok%$CR}" != "+OK" ] && exit 5  ## check that it succeeded
  echo pass "$passwd" >&3             ## send password
  read ok line <&3                    ## get response
  [ "${ok%$CR}" != "+OK" ] && exit 5  ## check that it succeeded
  echo stat >&3                       ## request number of messages
  read ok num x <&3                   ## get response
  echo quit >&3                       ## close connection

  ##echo Messages: $num                 ## display number of messages

  display "$image" &

  wait $delay
done

jlinkels · 04-30-2007, 11:39 PM

You can use fetchmail to check if there is new mail waiting. You should be able to write a periodic check and a pop-up message in almost any script language.

jlinkels