How do I deal with attachments when reading messages?

Created Mar 22, 2000

John Zukowski

When a message includes an attachment, the content of the message will be Multipart [message.getContent() instanceof Multipart] instead of Part. You'll need to get each part of the Multipart and process it [for (int i=0, n=multipart.getCount(); i<n; i++) process(multipart.getBodyPart(i))] based upon its disposition [part.getDisposition()] and content type [part.getContentType()].

The following program demonstrates this capability, leaving out the exception handling:

import java.io.*;
import java.util.Properties;
import javax.mail.*;
import javax.mail.internet.*;

public class GetParts {
  public static void main (String args[]) 
      throws Exception {
    String host = args[0];
    String username = args[1];
    String password = args[2];

    // Get session
    Session session = Session.getInstance(
      new Properties(), null);

    // Get the store
    Store store = session.getStore("pop3");
    store.connect(host, username, password);

    // Get folder
    Folder folder = store.getFolder("INBOX");
    folder.open(Folder.READ_ONLY);

    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader (
      new InputStreamReader(System.in));

    // Get directory
    Message message[] = folder.getMessages();
    for (int i=0, n=message.length; i<n; i++) {
       System.out.println(i + ": "
         + message[i].getFrom()[0] 
         + "	" + message[i].getSubject());

      System.out.println(
        "Do you want to get the content? 
           [YES to read/QUIT to end]");
      String line = reader.readLine();
      if ("YES".equals(line)) {
        Object content = message[i].getContent();
        if (content instanceof Multipart) {
          handleMultipart((Multipart)content);
        } else {
          handlePart(message[i]);
        }
      } else if ("QUIT".equals(line)) {
        break;
      }
    }

    // Close connection 
    folder.close(false);
    store.close();
  }
  public static void handleMultipart(Multipart multipart) 
      throws MessagingException, IOException {
    for (int i=0, n=multipart.getCount(); i<n; i++) {
      handlePart(multipart.getBodyPart(i));
    }
  }
  public static void handlePart(Part part) 
      throws MessagingException, IOException {
    String disposition = part.getDisposition();
    String contentType = part.getContentType();
    if (disposition == null) { // When just body
      System.out.println("Null: "  + contentType);
      // Check if plain
      if ((contentType.length() >= 10) && 
          (contentType.toLowerCase().substring(
           0, 10).equals("text/plain"))) {
        part.writeTo(System.out);
      } else { // Don't think this will happen
        System.out.println("Other body: " + contentType);
        part.writeTo(System.out);
      }
    } else if (disposition.equalsIgnoreCase(Part.ATTACHMENT)) {
      System.out.println("Attachment: " + part.getFileName() + 
        " : " + contentType);
      saveFile(part.getFileName(), part.getInputStream());
    } else if (disposition.equalsIgnoreCase(Part.INLINE)) {
      System.out.println("Inline: " + 
        part.getFileName() + 
        " : " + contentType);
      saveFile(part.getFileName(), part.getInputStream());
    } else {  // Should never happen
      System.out.println("Other: " + disposition);
    }
  }
  public static void saveFile(String filename,
      InputStream input) throws IOException {
    if (filename == null) {
      filename = File.createTempFile("xx", ".out").getName();
    }
    // Do no overwrite existing file
    File file = new File(filename);
    for (int i=0; file.exists(); i++) {
      file = new File(filename+i);
    }
    FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(file);
    BufferedOutputStream bos = new BufferedOutputStream(fos);

    BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(input);
    int aByte;
    while ((aByte = bis.read()) != -1) {
      bos.write(aByte);
    }
    bos.flush();
    bos.close();
    bis.close();
  }
}