Reading Email using Pop3 in C

Question

I am looking for a method of reading emails using Pop3 in C  2 0  Currently  I am using code found in CodeProject  However  this solution is less than ideal  The biggest problem is that it doesn t support emails written in unicode

User · Answer

HigLabo Mail is easy to use  Here is a sample usage   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

User · Answer

downloading the email via the POP3 protocol is the easy part of the task  The protocol is quite simple and the only hard part could be advanced authentication methods if you don t want to send a clear text password over the network  and cannot use the SSL encrypted communication channel   See RFC 1939  Post Office Protocol - Version 3  and RFC 1734  POP3 AUTHentication command for details   The hard part comes when you have to parse the received email  which means parsing MIME format in most cases  You can write quick amp dirty MIME parser in a few hours or days and it will handle 95   of all incoming messages  Improving the parser so it can parse almost any email means    getting email samples sent from the most popular mail clients and  improve the parser in order to fix errors and RFC misinterpretations generated by them  Making sure that messages violating RFC for message headers and content will not crash your parser and that you will be able to read every readable or guessable value from the mangled email correct handling of internationalization issues  e g  languages written from righ to left  correct encoding for specific language etc   UNICODE Attachments and hierarchical message item tree as seen in  Mime torture email sample   S MIME  signed and encrypted emails   and so on   Debugging a robust MIME parser takes months of work  I know  because I was watching my friend writing one such parser for the component mentioned below and was writing a few unit tests for it too  -   Back to the original question   Following code taken from our POP3 Tutorial page and links would 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 a 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

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My open source application BugTracker NET includes a POP3 client that can parse MIME    Both the POP3 code and the MIME code are from other authors  but you can see how it all fits together in my app   For the MIME parsing  I use http   anmar eu org projects sharpmimetools      See the file POP3Main cs  POP3Client cs  and insert bug aspx

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I just tried SMTPop and it worked    I downloaded this   Added smtpop dll reference 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   lt hostURL gt    110    lt username gt      lt password gt                     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  amp  amp  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

User · Answer

I wouldn t recommend OpenPOP  I just spent a few hours debugging an issue - OpenPOP s POPClient GetMessage   was mysteriously returning null  I debugged this and found it was a string index bug - see the patch I submitted here  http   sourceforge net tracker  func detail amp aid 2833334 amp group id 92166 amp atid 599778  It was difficult to find the cause since there are empty catch   blocks that swallow exceptions   Also  the project is mostly dormant    the last release was in 2004   For now we re still using OpenPOP  but I ll take a look at some of the other projects people have recommended here

User · Answer

You can also try Mail dll mail component  it has SSL support  unicode  and multi-national 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 at https   www limilabs com mail  Please note that this is a commercial product I ve created

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call me old fashion but why use a 3rd party library for a simple protocol   I ve implemented POP3 readers in web based ASP NET application with System Net Sockets TCPClient and System Net Security SslStream for the encryption and authentication   As far as protocols go  once you open up communication with the POP3 server  there are only a handful of commands that you have to deal with   It is a very easy protocol to work with

User · Answer

I ve successfully used OpenPop NET to access emails via POP3

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