Sending mails with Java - Text, HTML or with attachment (Apache Commons Mail)

Sending mails with Java is pretty simple using the Apache Commons Mail Library. Start by adding the commons-email dependency to your poject

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
  <artifactId>commons-email</artifactId>
  <version>1.4</version>
</dependency>

# Sending plain-text Emails

Here's a code sample for sending a plain-text email using the GMail SMTP server. Settings the debug mode to true, we get a lot of output on what happens.

  private static final String SMTP\_HOST = "smtp.gmail.com";
  private static final int SMTP\_PORT = 465;
  
  private static final String USERNAME = "user@gmail.com";
  private static final String PASSWORD = "pw";

  public static void main(String\[\] args) throws EmailException
  {
    SimpleEmail email = new SimpleEmail();
    email.setHostName(SMTP\_HOST);
    email.setAuthentication(USERNAME, PASSWORD);
    email.setDebug(true);
    email.setSmtpPort(SMTP\_PORT);
    email.setSSLOnConnect(true);

    email.addTo("empfaenger@domain.de");

    email.setFrom(USERNAME, "Name of thesender");
    email.setSubject("Test message");
    email.setMsg("Hey, this is a simple text");
    email.send();
  }

# Sending emails with attachments

For sending emails with attachments, we cannot use the SimpleEmail class. We need to use the MultiPartEmail class.

There are multiple ways to add an attachment to a mail. One example:

EmailAttachment attachment = new EmailAttachment();
attachment.setPath("mypictures/john.jpg");
attachment.setDisposition(EmailAttachment.ATTACHMENT);
attachment.setDescription("Picture of John");
attachment.setName("John");

email.attach(attachment);

or even easier:

email.attach(new File("C:/testfile.txt"));

You can also provide an URL to a file, that will be downloaded and attached:

mail.attach(new URL("http://urltofile.extension"), "Name", "Description");

An entire code sample for sending a mail with an attachment may look like this:

MultiPartEmail email = new MultiPartEmail();
email.setHostName(SMTP\_HOST);
email.setAuthentication(USERNAME, PASSWORD);
email.setDebug(true);
email.setSmtpPort(SMTP\_PORT);
email.setSSLOnConnect(true);
    
email.attach(new File("C:/testfile.txt"));

email.addTo("empfaenger@domain.de");

email.setFrom(USERNAME, "Sender name");
email.setSubject("Test message with attachment");
email.setMsg("Hey there, here is my file");
email.send();

# Sending emails with HTML

To send emails with HTML, you need to use the HtmlEmail class.

HtmlEmail email = new HtmlEmail();
email.setHostName(SMTP\_HOST);
email.setAuthentication(USERNAME, PASSWORD);
email.setDebug(true);
email.setSmtpPort(SMTP\_PORT);
email.setSSLOnConnect(true);

email.setHtmlMsg("<html>Test message with <b>HTML</b></html>");

// Just in case HTML is unsupported
email.setTextMsg("Dein E-Mail-Client unterstützt kein HTML.");

email.addTo("recipient@domain.de");
email.setFrom(USERNAME, "Sender");
email.setSubject("Test message with HTML");
email.send();

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