com.sun.mail.pop3

The POP3 provider provides a Store object that contains a single Folder named "INBOX". Due to the limitations of the POP3 protocol, many of the JavaMail API capabilities like event notification, folder management, flag management, etc. are not allowed. The corresponding methods throw the MethodNotSupportedException exception; see below for details.

Note that JavaMail does not include a local store into which messages can be downloaded and stored. See our Third Party Products web page for availability of "mbox" and "MH" local store providers.

The POP3 provider is accessed through the JavaMail APIs by using the protocol name "pop3" or a URL of the form "pop3://user:password@host:port/INBOX".

POP3 supports only a single folder named "INBOX".

POP3 supports no permanent flags (see {@link javax.mail.Folder#getPermanentFlags Folder.getPermanentFlags()}). In particular, the Flags.Flag.RECENT flag will never be set for POP3 messages. It's up to the application to determine which messages in a POP3 mailbox are "new". There are several strategies to accomplish this, depending on the needs of the application and the environment:

• A simple approach would be to keep track of the newest message seen by the application.
• An alternative would be to keep track of the UIDs (see below) of all messages that have been seen.
• Another approach is to download all messages into a local mailbox, so that all messages in the POP3 mailbox are, by definition, new.

All approaches will require some permanent storage associated with the client.

POP3 does not support the Folder.expunge() method. To delete and expunge messages, set the Flags.Flag.DELETED flag on the messages and close the folder using the Folder.close(true) method. You cannot expunge without closing the folder.

POP3 does not provide a "received date", so the getReceivedDate method will return null. It may be possible to examine other message headers (e.g., the "Received" headers) to estimate the received date, but these techniques are error-prone at best.

The POP3 provider supports the POP3 UIDL command, see {@link com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Folder#getUID POP3Folder.getUID()}. You can use it as follows:

if (folder instanceof com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Folder) {
    com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Folder pf =
	(com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Folder)folder;
    String uid = pf.getUID(msg);
    if (uid != null)
	... // use it
}

You can also pre-fetch all the UIDs for all messages like this:

FetchProfile fp = new FetchProfile();
fp.add(UIDFolder.FetchProfileItem.UID);
folder.fetch(folder.getMessages(), fp);

Then use the technique above to get the UID for each message. This is similar to the technique used with the UIDFolder interface supported by IMAP, but note that POP3 UIDs are strings, not integers like IMAP UIDs. See the POP3 spec for details.

The POP3 protocol provider supports the following properties, which may be set in the JavaMail Session object. The properties are always set as strings; the Type column describes how the string is interpreted. For example, use

	props.put("mail.pop3.port", "888");

Name	Type	Description
mail.pop3.user	String	Default user name for POP3.
mail.pop3.host	String	The POP3 server to connect to.
mail.pop3.port	int	The POP3 server port to connect to, if the connect() method doesn't explicitly specify one. Defaults to 110.
mail.pop3.connectiontimeout	int	Socket connection timeout value in milliseconds. Default is infinite timeout.
mail.pop3.timeout	int	Socket I/O timeout value in milliseconds. Default is infinite timeout.
mail.pop3.rsetbeforequit	boolean	Send a POP3 RSET command when closing the folder, before sending the QUIT command. Useful with POP3 servers that implicitly mark all messages that are read as "deleted"; this will prevent such messages from being deleted and expunged unless the client requests so. Default is false.
mail.pop3.message.class	String	Class name of a subclass of com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Message. The subclass can be used to handle (for example) non-standard Content-Type headers. The subclass must have a public constructor of the form MyPOP3Message(Folder f, int msgno) throws MessagingException.
mail.pop3.localaddress	String	Local address (host name) to bind to when creating the POP3 socket. Defaults to the address picked by the Socket class. Should not normally need to be set, but useful with multi-homed hosts where it's important to pick a particular local address to bind to.
mail.pop3.localport	int	Local port number to bind to when creating the POP3 socket. Defaults to the port number picked by the Socket class.
mail.pop3.apop.enable	boolean	If set to true, use APOP instead of USER/PASS to login to the POP3 server, if the POP3 server supports APOP. APOP sends a digest of the password rather than the clear text password. Defaults to false.
mail.pop3.socketFactory.class	String	If set, specifies the name of a class that implements the javax.net.SocketFactory interface. This class will be used to create POP3 sockets.
mail.pop3.socketFactory.fallback	boolean	If set to true, failure to create a socket using the specified socket factory class will cause the socket to be created using the java.net.Socket class. Defaults to true.
mail.pop3.socketFactory.port	int	Specifies the port to connect to when using the specified socket factory. If not set, the default port will be used.
mail.pop3.disabletop	boolean	If set to true, the POP3 TOP command will not be used to fetch message headers. This is useful for POP3 servers that don't properly implement the TOP command, or that provide incorrect information in the TOP command results. Defaults to false.
mail.pop3.forgettopheaders	boolean	If set to true, the headers that might have been retrieved using the POP3 TOP command will be forgotten and replaced by headers retrieved as part of the POP3 RETR command. Some servers, such as some versions of Microsft Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes, will return slightly different headers each time the TOP or RETR command is used. To allow the POP3 provider to properly parse the message content returned from the RETR command, the headers also returned by the RETR command must be used. Setting this property to true will cause these headers to be used, even if they differ from the headers returned previously as a result of using the TOP command. Defaults to false.

In general, applications should not need to use the classes in this package directly. Instead, they should use the APIs defined by javax.mail package (and subpackages). Applications should never construct instances of POP3Store or POP3Folder directly. Instead, they should use the Session method getStore to acquire an appropriate Store object, and from that acquire Folder objects.

WARNING: The APIs unique to this package should be considered EXPERIMENTAL. They may be changed in the future in ways that are incompatible with applications using the current APIs.