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Jakarta Mail

Jakarta Mail Implementation


The Jakarta Mail API provides a platform-independent and protocol-independent framework to build mail and messaging applications. The Jakarta Mail API is available as an optional package for use with the Java SE platform and is also included in the Jakarta EE platform and the Java EE platform.

Table of Contents

Latest News

March 10, 2020 - Jakarta Mail 1.6.5 Final Release

The 1.6.5 release is (hopefully) the last release of the Jakarta Mail project in the 1.x line, and includes several bug fixes and enhancements. The main jar file is located at com.sun.mail:jakarta.mail.

Jakarta Mail, like other parts of Jakarta EE, is moving to the jakarta.* package namespace. This is a major change, and so the next release will be Jakarta Mail 2.0.0, which will be included in Jakarta EE 9. Applications should be able to switch to this new version fairly easily by just changing all imports that use javax.mail.* to instead use jakarta.mail.*. Note that SNAPSHOT and Release Candidate versions of Jakarta Mail 2.0.0 are already available.

August 28, 2019 - Jakarta Mail 1.6.4 Final Release

The 1.6.4 release is the first release of the Jakarta Mail project using the Jakarta EE Specification Process and includes several bug fixes and enhancements. The main jar file is located at com.sun.mail:jakarta.mail.

July 3, 2019 - Jakarta Mail is the new name for JavaMail

The JavaMail technology contributed to the Eclipse Foundation has been renamed to “Jakarta Mail” to reflect its role in the Jakarta EE platform.

November 26, 2018 - JavaMail 1.6.3 Final Release

The 1.6.3 release is the first release of the Eclipse project for JavaMail and includes no bug fixes or enhancements. It does include changes to the Maven coordinates. The main jar file is now located at com.sun.mail:jakarta.mail.

September 14, 2018 - JavaMail project moves to the Eclipse Foundation!

The JavaMail project is now hosted at the Eclipse Foundation as part of the EE4J project.

By contributing to this project, you agree to these additional terms of use, described in CONTRIBUTING.

Download Jakarta Mail Release

The latest release of Jakarta Mail is 1.6.5.

The following table provides easy access to the latest release. Most people will only need the main Jakarta Mail implementation in the jakarta.mail.jar file.

Item Description
jakarta.mail.jar The Jakarta Mail implementation, including the SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 protocol providers
README.txt Overview of the release
NOTES.txt Additional notes about using Jakarta Mail
SSLNOTES.txt Notes on using SSL/TLS with Jakarta Mail
NTLMNOTES.txt Notes on using NTLM authentication with Jakarta Mail
CHANGES.txt Changes since the previous release
COMPAT.txt Important notes about compatibility

In addition, the Jakarta Mail jar files are published to the Maven repository. The main Jakarta Mail jar file, which is all most applications will need, can be included using this Maven dependency:

        <dependencies>
            <dependency>
                <groupId>com.sun.mail</groupId>
                <artifactId>jakarta.mail</artifactId>
                <version>1.6.5</version>
            </dependency>
        </dependencies>

You can find all of the Jakarta Mail jar files in Maven Central.

jar file groupId artifactId Description
jakarta.mail.jar com.sun.mail jakarta.mail The Jakarta Mail implementation jar file, including the SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 protocol providers
jakarta.mail-api.jar jakarta.mail jakarta.mail-api The Jakarta Mail API definitions only, suitable for compiling against; use only with a Maven “provided” dependency scope
mailapi.jar com.sun.mail mailapi The Jakarta Mail implementation with no protocol providers; use with one of the following providers
smtp.jar com.sun.mail smtp The SMTP protocol provider
imap.jar com.sun.mail imap The IMAP protocol provider
pop3.jar com.sun.mail pop3 The POP3 protocol provider
gimap.jar com.sun.mail gimap An EXPERIMENTAL Gmail IMAP protocol provider that supports Gmail-specific features
dsn.jar com.sun.mail dsn Support for parsing and creating messages containing Delivery Status Notifications
logging-mailhandler.jar com.sun.mail logging-mailhandler A java.util.logging handler that uses Jakarta Mail, suitable for use in Google App Engine.

API Documentation

The Jakarta Mail 1.6 API is defined through the Jakarta EE Specification Process.

The Jakarta Mail 1.6 specification and API documentation are available here.

Note that Jakarta Mail 1.6 is identical to JavaMail 1.6.

The JavaMail 1.6 and earlier API is defined through the Java Community Process as JSR 919.

The following documents summarize the API changes in each release of the JavaMail API specification:

Samples

Some sample programs showing how to use the Jakarta Mail APIs are available here.

Help

Please read the Jakarta Mail FAQ! Read it again. Tell everyone you know to read it. Thank you!

You can post questions to the mail-dev mailing list.

Or, post a question on Stack Overflow using the javamail tag.

Bugs

Jakarta Mail bugs are tracked in the GitHub Jakarta Mail project issue tracker.

Development Releases

From time to time snapshot releases of the next version of Jakarta Mail under development are published to the Jakarta Sonatype OSS repository. These snapshot releases have received only minimal testing, but may provide previews of bug fixes or new features under development.

For example, you can download the jakarta.mail.jar file from the Jakarta Mail 2.0.0-SNAPSHOT release here. Be sure to scroll to the bottom and choose the jar file with the most recent time stamp.

You’ll need to add the following configuration to your Maven ~/.m2/settings.xml to be able to use these with Maven:

    <profiles>
        <!-- to allow loading Jakarta snapshot artifacts -->
        <profile>
            <id>jakarta-snapshots</id>
            <pluginRepositories>
                <pluginRepository>
                    <id>jakarta-snapshots</id>
                    <name>Jakarta Snapshots</name>
                    <snapshots>
                        <enabled>true</enabled>
                        <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
                        <checksumPolicy>fail</checksumPolicy>
                    </snapshots>
                    <url>https://jakarta.oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/</url>
                    <layout>default</layout>
                </pluginRepository>
            </pluginRepositories>
        </profile>
    </profiles>

And then when you build use mvn -Pjakarta-snapshots ....

If you want the plugin repository to be enabled all the time so you don’t need the -P, add:

    <activeProfiles>
        <activeProfile>jakarta-snapshots</activeProfile>
    </activeProfiles>

Jakarta Mail for Android

The latest release includes support for Jakarta Mail on Android. See the Android page for details.

Project Documentation

You’ll find more information about the protocol providers supported by Jakarta Mail on the following pages:

If you’re interested in writing your own protocol provider (most people won’t need to), you can find more documentation on protocol providers here.

The use of OAuth2 authentication with Jakarta Mail is described here.

The following pages provide hints and tips for using particular mail servers:

The following pages provide hints and tips for using Jakarta Mail on particular operating systems or environments:

See Build Instructions for instructions on how to download and build the most recent Jakarta Mail source code. You can also find a bundle of the source code for the most recent Jakarta Mail release in the Releases area of this project.

If you’re interested in contributing to Jakarta Mail, see the Contributions page.

You can find a list of products related to Jakarta Mail on the Third Party Products page.

Please see our page of links to additional information about Jakarta Mail and Internet email and our list of books about Jakarta Mail and Internet email.

To understand the Jakarta Mail license, see the License page.

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