NOTES ===== JavaMail(TM) API 1.1.3 release ------------------------------ Welcome to the 1.1.3 release of the JavaMail API implementation. Please refer to CHANGES.txt for a list of the changes since the 1.1.2 release. Please see the FAQ at http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/FAQ.html A list of the provider specific properties: ------------------------------------------- The following properties are specified by the JavaMail API specification (Appendix A). Name Type Description ---- ---- ------------ mail.imap.user String Default user name for IMAP. mail.imap.host String The IMAP server to connect to. mail.smtp.user String Default user name for SMTP Authentication. mail.smtp.host String The SMTP server to connect to. The following properties are specific to our IMAP provider. These properties are not part of the JavaMail API specification, so they may change in future versions. Name Type Description ---- ---- ------------ mail.imap.port int The IMAP server port to connect to, if the connect() method doesn't explicitly specify one. Defaults to 143. mail.imap.partialfetch boolean Controls whether the IMAP partial-fetch capability should be used. Defaults to true. mail.imap.fetchsize int Partial fetch size in bytes. Defaults to 16K. mail.imap.timeout int Socket timeout value in milliseconds. Default is infinite timeout. mail.imap.statuscachetimeout int Timeout value in milliseconds for cache of STATUS command response. Default is 1000 (1 second). Zero disables cache. The following properties are specific to our SMTP provider. These properties are not part of the JavaMail API specification, so they may change in future versions. The SMTP provider has been enhanced to support ESMTP (RFC1651). It can optionally use SMTP Authentication (RFC2554) using the LOGIN and PLAIN mechanisms (Internet Draft draft-newman-tls-imappop-09.txt). Note, however, that SASL (RFC2222 and RFC2487) is NOT supported. To use SMTP authentication you'll need to provide the SMTP Transport with a username and password when connecting to the SMTP server. You can do this using one of the following approaches: - Provide an Authenticator object when creating your mail Session and provide the username and password information during the Authenticator callback. Note that the mail.smtp.user property can be set to provide a default username for the callback, but the password will still need to be supplied explicitly. This approach allows you to use the static Transport.send method to send messages. - Call the Transport connect method explicitly with username and password arguments. This approach requires you to explicitly manage a Transport object and use the Transport sendMessage method to send the message. The transport.java demo program demonstrates how to manage a Transport object. The following is roughly equivalent to the static Transport send method, but supplies the needed username and password: Transport tr = session.getTransport("smtp"); tr.connect(smtphost, username, password); msg.saveChanges(); // don't forget this tr.sendMessage(msg); tr.close(); SMTP can also optionally request Delivery Status Notifications (RFC1891). See below for the properties to enable these features. These new SMTP features should be considered EXPERIMENTAL, and thus likely to change in future releases. Note also that THERE IS NOT SUFFICIENT DOCUMENTATION HERE TO USE THESE FEATURES!!! You will need to read the appropriate RFCs mentioned above to understand what these features do and how to use them. Don't just start setting properties and then complain to us when it doesn't work like you expect it to work. READ THE RFCs FIRST!!! Name Type Description ---- ---- ------------ mail.smtp.port int The SMTP server port to connect to, if the connect() method doesn't explicitly specify one. Defaults to 25. mail.smtp.from String Email address to use for SMTP MAIL command. This sets the envelope return address. Defaults to msg.getFrom() or InternetAddress.getLocalAddress(). NOTE: mail.smtp.user was previously used for this. mail.smtp.localhost String Local host name. Defaults to InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName(). Should not normally need to be set if your JDK and your name service are configured properly. mail.smtp.timeout int Socket timeout value in milliseconds. Default is infinite timeout. mail.stmp.ehlo boolean If false, do not attempt to sign on with the EHLO command. Defaults to true. Normally failure of the EHLO command will fallback to the HELO command; this property exists only for servers that don't fail EHLO properly or don't implement EHLO properly. mail.stmp.auth boolean If true, attempt to authenticate the user using the AUTH command. Defaults to false. mail.smtp.dsn.notify String The NOTIFY option to the RCPT command. Either NEVER, or some combination of SUCCESS, FAILURE, and DELAY (separated by commas). mail.smtp.dsn.ret String The RET option to the MAIL command. Either FULL or HDRS. A list of the known limitations, bugs, issues: ---------------------------------------------- 1. Unsigned applets that use this version of the JavaMail API will not work under the Netscape browser, due to security restrictions that prevent the "provider" and "mailcap" related files from being loaded from mail.jar and activation.jar. We have not explored yet whether signed applets will work. We are investigating this further and will attempt to make the appropriate fixes in the next minor release. A possible solution is to use the Java(TM) Plug-in that isn't affected by the restrictions that Netscape places on the resource files. (http://java.sun.com/products/plugin) 2. Internationalization. Parameter encoding in MIME headers hasn't yet been implemented. These will be provided in a later release. 3. We've received reports of problems using the JavaMail API in servlets driven by Netscape web servers. The error is that the Netscape servlet implementation doesn't support the java.awt.datatransfer.Transferable class which is used by the JAF. We recommend that you submit a bug report with Netscape. 4. We've received reports of IMAP authentication failures on the Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5, enterprise edition. This is due to a bug in the Microsoft server and the "Service Pack 1 for Exchange Server 5.5" apparently fixes this server bug. The service pack can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. 5. Due to a problem in the Microsoft Exchange IMAP server, insufficient number of bytes may be retrieved when reading big messages. There are two ways to workaround this Exchange bug: (a) The Exchange IMAP server provides a configuration option called "fast message retrieval" to the UI. Simply go to the site, server or recipient, click on the "IMAP4" tab, and one of the check boxes is "enable fast message retrieval". Turn it off and the octet counts will be exact. (b) Set the "mail.imap.partialfetch" property to false. You'll have to set this property in the Properties object that you provide to your Session. 6. Certain IMAP servers do not implement the IMAP Partial FETCH functionality properly. This problem typically manifests as corrupt email attachments when downloading large messages from the IMAP server. To workaround this server bug, set the "mail.imap.partialfetch" property to false. You'll have to set this property in the Properties object that you provide to your Session. Servers tested with: -------------------- The IMAP implementation works with IMAP4 and IMAP4rev1 servers. The current release has been tested with: Sun Internet Mail Server version 2.0 and 4.0 Netscape Messaging Server version 4.0 UW IMAP4 server version 4.7 Cyrus IMAP4 server version 1.6.19 Previous releases have been tested with: Sun Internet Mail Server version 2.0 and 3.2 UW IMAP4rev1 server Netscape 3.01 Messaging Server beta version of the Netscape 4.0 Messaging Server Microsoft Exchange Microsoft MCIS Mail Server Lotus Notes Software.com IMAP server Qualcomm Worldmail Cyrus IMAP4 server The current release of the SMTP implementation has been tested with: Sendmail version 8.9.1 Sun Internet Mail Server version 4.0 Netscape Messaging Server version 4.0 Previous releases have been tested with: Sendmail 8.6 Sun Internet Mail Server 3.2 Netscape 3.01 Messaging Server Microsoft Exchange Microsoft MCIS Mail Server Qualcomm Worldmail JavaMail API 1.1.3 Y2K compliance ------------------------------ Summary: JavaMail API 1.1.3 is Option-3 compliant. Sun's JavaMail API implementation uses the java.util.Date class to store Date objects internally. Dates can be introduced into the JavaMail API in the following ways: 1) When reading a MIME message from a MIME input stream. The MimeMessage constructor parses the MIME stream. One of the RFC822 headers is the "Date" field. As per the RFC, this date field must have 4-digit years. However, older or non-compliant software may generate 2-digit years. The JavaMail API follows the recommendations from the IETF-DRUMS draft (http://www.imc.org/draft-ietf-drums-msg-fmt) to parse such date strings: 00 through 49 represents 2000 through 2049; 50 through 99 represents 1950 through 1999 2) The IMAP provider deals with two kinds of dates: Received Date & Sent Date The Recieved Date is an IMAP data item (INTERNALDATE) and can contain only 4-digit years. The Sent Date is actually the "Date" RFC822 header. The IMAP provider follows the logic listed in the previous section to parse this header, thus it is compliant with the IETF-DRUMS draft. 3) Dates can be set externally by the client when creating a MimeMessage using the MimeMessage.setSentDate(java.util.Date) method. The Date class is defined in the java.util package; the JavaMail API has nothing to do with the interpretation of date strings by the Date class. The Y2K compliance of this class is defined by the particular JDK implementation. (Note that JDK1.1.6 is Option-3 compliant) From (1) and (2), we can conclude that Sun's implementation of the JavaMail API is Option-3 compliant. For more information on compliance levels, refer: http://www.sun.com/y2000 JavaMail API 100% Pure Java Certification ----------------------------------------- Sun's JavaMail API implementation is 100% pure Java. Earlier versions have been certified by KeyLabs. (See http://java.sun.com/100percent) This latest release (1.1.3) has not yet been certified 100% pure Java, but we anticipate that this will be done without any problems. ------------------------------------------------------------------- How to give feedback -------------------- Please send your feedback to this email-address: javamail@sun.com Check out our website at http://java.sun.com/products/javamail You can subscribe to our open discussion-list: javamail-interest@java.sun.com. Or you can subscribe to our low-volume mailing-list (where we announce product updates and other relevant information): javamail-announce@java.sun.com. Instructions on how to subscribe are on our website. How to submit bug reports ------------------------- If you've found a bug, or if you just need help figuring out how to use the JavaMail API, please try to include the following information in your message to us: - a program or code snippet that shows the problem - the platform you are using - the mail server (vendor name, version number) you are using - your environment variable settings - a stack trace, if appropriate - a protocol trace, after turning on session debugging, if appropriate Most of the problems reported to us fail to include enough of the above information to allow us to diagnose your problem. It will save you and us time if you include this information in your first message to us. By far the most common problems we see are: Your problem: Something doesn't work right when talking to my mail server. Our response: Turn on session debugging and send us the protocol trace. See the demo program documentation and/or our FAQ for how to turn on session debugging. Your problem: javax.mail or javax.activation classes not found when compiling. Our response: You didn't set CLASSPATH correctly to find mail.jar and activation.jar. See README.txt. Your problem: NoSuchProviderException - No such provider for RFC822. Our response: You unjar'ed mail.jar. Don't. Your problem: How do I create a message with an attachment? Our response: Create a message with a MimeMultipart content. See the sendfile.html and msgmultisendsample.java demo programs. Please check the FAQ at http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/FAQ.html before submitting bug reports. Send your bug reports to: javamail@sun.com ------------------------------------------------------------------