Sending Simple Mail through Java (Spring)

Seriously, there are plenty of examples for this available on net and mine isn't any different in that respect (well not this one). So here we go...

I am using a maven project but you can do it without that also though it would be bit pain to download the jar by yourself and putting them in buildpath.....still the concept that matters.

so first of all the dependency needed to be added is (I assume there is already a spring core, context and junit test dependency available).

<!-- Java Mail API -->
    <dependency>
     <groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
     <artifactId>mail</artifactId>
     <version>1.4.5</version>
    </dependency>

Secondly, since I am using maven and spring, I would define a bean in the Spring configuration xml file.

<bean class="org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSenderImpl" id="mailSender">
    <property name="host" value="smtp.gmail.com">
    <property name="port" value="587">
    <property name="username" value="username">
    <property name="password" value="password">
    <property name="javaMailProperties">
       <props>
           <prop key="mail.smtp.auth">true</prop>
           <prop key="mail.smtp.starttls.enable">true</prop>
       </props>
    </property>
</bean>

Now our java mail sender bean is ready (I don't need to tell that put your username and password value in the properties) we have define a gmail host smtp.gmail.com and port is 587 because that's the port gmail uses for smtp (though 25 is a default port for smtp). also we need to turn on few properties like auth and tls. but that's about configuration.

Now we will prepare for using this mailSender bean to send a simple message.

So here is my class for that -

package simpleSendMail;
 

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.mail.MailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
 
@Component
public class SendMail
{
    @Autowired
    private MailSender mailSender;
 
 public void sendMail(String from, String[] to, String subject, String msg) {
  SimpleMailMessage message = new SimpleMailMessage();
  message.setFrom(from);
  message.setTo(to);
  message.setSubject(subject);
  message.setText(msg);
  mailSender.send(message); 
 }
}

As you see I have autowired the mailSender bean to be used here, instead of it you very well can define this class as a bean and in xml configuration file link mailSender bean to the property of this one....if that is the case don't forget to put a setter......maybe this will help.

So as you can see there is a method which takes parameter for from, to addresses and subject and text to be sent then initiates the object of SimpleMessage class , sets the value and with our mailSender it sends that SimpleMessage

below is the Test class for that.

package simpleSendMail;

import org.junit.Test;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;

public class SendMailTest {

  @Test 
 public void mailTest(){
    ApplicationContext context = new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext("simpleSendMail/SpringMail.xml");

       SendMail mm = (SendMail) context.getBean("sendMail");
           mm.sendMail("sender@gmail.com",
        new String[]{"recepient1@gmail.com","recepient2@rediffmail.com"},
        "Hello Friend", 
        "This is a test mail");
 } 
}

Again in test method you will provide valid mail addresses for to and from option

This might( and most surely) would fail if you are behind some proxy or firewall which doesn't let you use the specified port directly and blocks it considering it a threat. (Solution? I am still trying to find out.)