Reading email using Pop3 in C #

Question

I am looking for a method of reading letters using Pop3 in C # 2.0. I am currently using the code found in CodeProject . However, this solution is less than ideal. The biggest problem is that it does not support emails written in unicode.

Answer 1

I have successfully used OpenPop.NET to access email through POP3.

Answer 2

downloading emails via POP3 is an easy part of the task. The protocol is quite simple, and the advanced authentication methods can be the only difficult part if you do not want to send a text password over the network (and cannot use an SSL-encrypted communication channel). See RFC 1939: Mail Branch Protocol - Version 3 and RFC 1734: POP3 AUTHentication Command for details.

The tough part comes when you have to parse the received email, which means parsing the MIME format in most cases. You can write a fast and efficient MIME parser in a few hours or days, and it will process 95% of all incoming messages. Improving the parser so that it can parse almost any means of email:

• receiving email samples sent from the most popular email clients, and improving the analyzer to correct errors and misinterpretations of RFCs created by them.
• Make sure that messages that violate the RFC for message headers and content will not break your parser and that you can read every readable or valid value from a garbled message
• proper handling of internationalization issues (for example, languages ​​written from righ to left, the correct encoding for a particular language, etc.)
• Unicode
• Attachments and the hierarchical tree of message items as shown in the Mime torture email example
• S / MIME (signed and encrypted letters).
• etc.

Debugging a reliable MIME analyzer takes many months. I know, because I watched my friend write one such parser for the component mentioned below, and wrote some unit tests for it; -)

Return to the original question.

Following the code taken from our POP3 Tutorial page and the links will help you:

// // create client, connect and log in Pop3 client = new Pop3(); client.Connect("pop3.example.org"); client.Login("username", "password"); // get message list Pop3MessageCollection list = client.GetMessageList(); if (list.Count == 0) { Console.WriteLine("There are no messages in the mailbox."); } else { // download the first message MailMessage message = client.GetMailMessage(list[0].SequenceNumber); ... } client.Disconnect(); 

• HOWTO: Download emails from GMail account in C # (blogpost)
• Rebex Mail for .NET (POP3 / IMAP client component for .NET)
• Rebex Secure Mail for .NET (POP3 / IMAP client component for .NET - SSL enabled)

Answer 3

My open source application BugTracker.NET includes a POP3 client that can parse MIME. Both the POP3 code and the MIME code are owned by other authors, but you can see how it all fits together in my application.

For MIME parsing, I use http://anmar.eu.org/projects/sharpmimetools/ .

See the file POP3Main.cs, POP3Client.cs and insert_bug.aspx

Answer 4

You can also try the mail component Mail.dll , it has SSL support, Unicode and multinational email support:

 using(Pop3 pop3 = new Pop3()) { pop3.Connect("mail.host.com"); // Connect to server and login pop3.Login("user", "password"); foreach(string uid in pop3.GetAll()) { IMail email = new MailBuilder() .CreateFromEml(pop3.GetMessageByUID(uid)); Console.WriteLine( email.Subject ); } pop3.Close(false); } 

You can download it here, https://www.limilabs.com/mail

Please note that this is a commercial product that I created.

Answer 5

I would not recommend OpenPOP. I just spent several hours debugging the problem - OpenPOP POPClient.GetMessage () mysteriously returned null. I debugged this and found that it was a row index error - see the Patch I presented here: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2833334&group_id=92166&atid=599778 . It was difficult to find the reason, since there are empty catch {} blocks that swallow exceptions.

In addition, the project is mostly dormant ... the last release was in 2004.

For now, we are still using OpenPOP, but I will review some of the other projects recommended here.

Answer 6

HigLabo.Mail is easy to use. Here is a usage example:

 using (Pop3Client cl = new Pop3Client()) { cl.UserName = "MyUserName"; cl.Password = "MyPassword"; cl.ServerName = "MyServer"; cl.AuthenticateMode = Pop3AuthenticateMode.Pop; cl.Ssl = false; cl.Authenticate(); ///Get first mail of my mailbox Pop3Message mg = cl.GetMessage(1); String MyText = mg.BodyText; ///If the message have one attachment Pop3Content ct = mg.Contents[0]; ///you can save it to local disk ct.DecodeData("your file path"); } 

you can get it from https://github.com/higty/higlabo or Nuget [HigLabo]

Answer 7

Tell me the old fashion, but why use a third-party library for a simple protocol. I implemented POP3 readers in an ASP.NET web application using System.Net.Sockets.TCPClient and System.Net.Security.SslStream for encryption and authentication. As for protocols, as soon as you open a connection to a POP3 server, there are only a few commands that you have to deal with. This is a very simple protocol to work with.

Answer 8

I just tried SMTPop and it worked.

• I downloaded this one .
• Added smtpop.dll link to my C # .NET project

Wrote the following code:

 using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; using SmtPop; namespace SMT_POP3 { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { SmtPop.POP3Client pop = new SmtPop.POP3Client(); pop.Open("<hostURL>", 110, "<username>", "<password>"); // Get message list from POP server SmtPop.POPMessageId[] messages = pop.GetMailList(); if (messages != null) { // Walk attachment list foreach(SmtPop.POPMessageId id in messages) { SmtPop.POPReader reader= pop.GetMailReader(id); SmtPop.MimeMessage msg = new SmtPop.MimeMessage(); // Read message msg.Read(reader); if (msg.AddressFrom != null) { String from= msg.AddressFrom[0].Name; Console.WriteLine("from: " + from); } if (msg.Subject != null) { String subject = msg.Subject; Console.WriteLine("subject: "+ subject); } if (msg.Body != null) { String body = msg.Body; Console.WriteLine("body: " + body); } if (msg.Attachments != null && false) { // Do something with first attachment SmtPop.MimeAttachment attach = msg.Attachments[0]; if (attach.Filename == "data") { // Read data from attachment Byte[] b = Convert.FromBase64String(attach.Body); System.IO.MemoryStream mem = new System.IO.MemoryStream(b, false); //BinaryFormatter f = new BinaryFormatter(); // DataClass data= (DataClass)f.Deserialize(mem); mem.Close(); } // Delete message // pop.Dele(id.Id); } } } pop.Quit(); } } }