How to retrieve email body of any email, using Java Mail API

Question

I am developing a Mail Client in Java (JSP and Struts). I have successfully fetched Message header information and stored in my local Database (including Message ID and subject).

When the user views the mails, I fetch the message headers from my database and display them to user. Now when the user click a particular Email, I want to fetch the mail body and file attachments from the Gmail server, directly. I don't want to serially travel through all the mails on the Gmail Server.

I have done this earlier in PHP, where if I pass the message id and I can retrieve the details of that particular mail. Is there any similar functionality in Java Mail API? If not, then can anyone suggest me a solution to this?

Answer 1

You can use Folder#getMessage(int) for this.

Note that the zip file with the JavaMail API which you can download from their side includes a lot of examples in /demo folder, under each a basic(!) Servlet which shows a simple mailbox with this functionality. You may want to build, refactor and expand further based on the simple example.