Java Email message Parser?

Question

Is anyone familiar with a Java library that helps with parsing the fields (date, subject, from, to) of the email below?

Message-ID: <19815303.1075861029555.JavaMail.ss@kk>
Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2010 12:32:20 -0800 (PST)
From: someone@someotherplace.com
To: someone@someplace.com
Subject: some subject
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-From: one, some <some.one@someotherplace.com>
X-To: one
X-cc: 
X-bcc: 
X-Folder: Bob\Inbox
X-Origin: Bob-R
X-FileName: rbob (Non-Privileged).pst


some message

Answer 1

JavaMail is an oracle library that provides mail services and mail related services (like parsing conventional & MIME messages) in the javax.mail package. Additionally Apache has a Commons Email library for mail handling.

In the JavaMail api, a simple way to parse a string containing an email message (which may or may not be explicitly MIME) would be as follows

String content = ...
Session s = Session.getInstance(new Properties());
InputStream is = new ByteArrayInputStream(content.getBytes());
MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(s, is);

and parsing the headers could be done like this

message.getAllHeaderLines();
for (Enumeration<Header> e = message.getAllHeaders(); e.hasMoreElements();) {
    Header h = e.nextElement();
    h.getName();
    h.getValue();
}

Answer 2

I have had problems with JavaMail (it fails to parse some email messages that it should).

I have had much better results with Mime4J.

Answer 3

I would suggest you use email-mime-parser,

Following sample code gives you all the relevant info you need:

ContentHandler contentHandler = new CustomContentHandler();

MimeConfig mime4jParserConfig = new MimeConfig();
BodyDescriptorBuilder bodyDescriptorBuilder = new DefaultBodyDescriptorBuilder();
MimeStreamParser mime4jParser = new MimeStreamParser(mime4jParserConfig,DecodeMonitor.SILENT,bodyDescriptorBuilder);
mime4jParser.setContentDecoding(true);
mime4jParser.setContentHandler(contentHandler);

InputStream mailIn = 'Provide email mime stream here';
mime4jParser.parse(mailIn);

Email email = ((CustomContentHandler) contentHandler).getEmail();

List<Attachment> attachments =  email.getAttachments();

Attachment calendar = email.getCalendarBody();
Attachment htmlBody = email.getHTMLEmailBody();
Attachment plainText = email.getPlainTextEmailBody();

String to = email.getToEmailHeaderValue();
String cc = email.getCCEmailHeaderValue();
String from = email.getFromEmailHeaderValue();