We Shall Javail!

A silly test of some even sillier things i.e. sending email with Java

Setup

First thing you'll need is a test server. If you've got an SMTP server lying around and know how to wield it, you're good-to-go. Otherwise, follow this steps to get a simple local mail server set up on Ubuntu 16.04...other distro/versions like work as well.

Note: Choose 'Local' mail server at the dconf prompt when install postfix, safer. For the rest, the defaults are reasonable, tweak if you want.

sudo apt update
sudo DEBIAN_PRIORITY=low apt-get install postfix # choose local server
sudo postconf -e 'home_mailbox= Maildir/'
sudo postconf -e 'virtual_alias_maps= hash:/etc/postfix/virtual'
echo "[email protected] $USER" >> sudo tee -a /etc/postfix/virtual
sudo postmap /etc/postfix/virtual
sudo systemctl restart postfix.service 
sudo ufw status # if enabled, open ports or disable

You should now have a simple test server. Next, a test client is useful but not necessary, as you could just cat the file in your ~/Maildir directory...the simple beauty of using Maildir over mbox ;)

For an easy client, do

echo 'export MAIL=~/Maildir' | \
    sudo tee -a /etc/bash.bashrc | \
    sudo tee -a /etc/profile.d/mail.sh
source /etc/profile.d/mail.sh # optionally add to your .bashrc
sudo apt-get install s-nail
echo "\nset emptystart\nset folder=Maildir\nset record=+sent" | sudo -a tee /etc/s-nail.rc 

Give it a quick test.

Note: The "Can't canonicalize 'blah'" is normal because you didn't have a maildir yet. That's why we did the set emptystart above.

echo 'init' | mail -s 'init' -Snorecord $USER
ls Maildir/new/
cat Maildir/new/*

You should see something that looks like an SMPT message. Congrats!

Building, testing, sending

Now we just need to try out the code. Assuming you have recent version of Maven, it should go something like this

mvn package
java -jar target/javail-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar localhost jack@localhost [email protected] Hello 'This is a test email'

And checking with mail we should see something like

$ mail
s-nail version v14.8.6.  Type ? for help.
"/home/jack/Maildir": 1 message 1 new
>N  1 jack@localhost     Wed Dec 31 19:00   17/525   Hello                      
? 

And hitting enter here should show something like

[-- Message  1 -- 17 lines, 525 bytes --]:
From jack@localhost Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2018 12:08:43 -0500 (EST)
From: jack@localhost
To: [email protected]
Message-ID: <1225358173.0.1516813723695@jackbox>
Subject: Hello

This email is a test.

? 

Yeah!