How to send programmatically an email from another mail client than outlook or outlook express?

Question

From within your application you can send an email by using MAPI functions ("MAPISendMail"). But if there is another mail client installed like "Thunderbird" or "David InfoCenter" the use of MAPI functions does not work, because "Outlook" or "Outlook Express" is not the standard email client.

The use of shell functions to execute "mailto:" is not satisfying because not all email clients do support command line parameters for mail attachment or mail body.

What can I do instead to get my desired result?

Answer 1

Which platform?

If .NET take a look at this the SmtpClient class.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.smtpclient.aspx

Answer 2

If Java,

JavaMail

The JavaMail API provides a platform-independent and protocol-independent framework to build mail and messaging applications. The JavaMail API is available as an optional package for use with Java SE platform and is also included in the Java EE platform.

or

JAMES

James is a 100% pure Java SMTP and POP3 Mail server, and NNTP News server designed to be a complete and portable enterprise mail/messaging engine solution based on currently available open messaging protocols.