Spring Email Tutorial with Examples

Overview of Spring Mail
Note for Gmail
Configure Spring Mail
Example of sending a simple Email
Send an Email attached with files
Send an email in HTML format

1. Overview of Spring Mail

Spring Framework provides you with a API to send an email. It includes some interfaces and classes, all of which are located in the two packages such as org.springframework.mail & org.springframework.mail.javamail.

To use the Spring Mail in the Spring Boot application, let's add the following dependencies to the pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-mail</artifactId>
</dependency>

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
        http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
        
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.o7planning</groupId>
    <artifactId>SpringBootMail</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>SpringBootMail</name>
    <description>Spring Boot + Mail</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>        
        
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-mail</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

The Spring Mail also has many classes or interfaces. Basically, below is the list of main classes and interfaces:

org.springframework.mail.MailSender
org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage
org.springframework.mail.MailMessage
org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender
org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSenderImpl
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessagePreparator
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper
org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMailMessage

MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions):
MIME (Multi-Purpose Internet Mail Extensions): an extension of initial Internet Email. It allows sending the emails attached with different kinds of data in the Internet such as audio, video, image,.., and supports emails in HTML format.

Class/Interface	Description
MailSender	This is a top-level interface, which provides functions to send a simple email.
JavaMailSender	This is the subinterface of MailSender, which supports MIME -typed messages, It is usualy used with MimeMessageHelper class to create MimeMessage. An advice is to use the MimeMessagePreparator interface with this interface.
JavaMailSenderImpl	means a class implementing the JavaMailSender interface. It supports to send MimeMessage and SimpleMailMessage messages.
MailMessage	Means an interface representing for a simple message. It includes basic information of an email such as sender, recipient, subject and content of message.
SimpleMailMessage	This is a class implementing the MailMessage interface, used to create a simple message.
MimeMailMessage	This is a class implementing the MailMessage interface, used to create a message supporting MIME.
MimeMessagePreparator	This interface provides callback method called when preparing a MIME message.
MimeMessageHelper	means a supporting class to create a MIME message. It supports image, and attached files and creates HTML-typed messages.

2. Note for Gmail

In this lesson, I am going to use a Gmail account to send a message because Gmail is a common Mail-Server . However, for your Gmail account to be able to send an email via a Java application, you have to tell the Google to allow it. OK, first of all, on the browser, you log in your Gmail account and then visit the following address:

https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

Activate to allow your Gmail account to be used by Less Secure Apps.

https://support.google.com/domains/answer/9437157?hl=en

3. Configure Spring Mail

In the Spring application, you should create a Spring-Bean for MailSender. For example, below, I use a Gmail account to send anemail.

MailConfig.java

package org.o7planning.sbmail.config;

import java.util.Properties;

import org.o7planning.sbmail.MyConstants;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSenderImpl;

@Configuration
public class MailConfig {

    @Bean
    public JavaMailSender getJavaMailSender() {
        JavaMailSenderImpl mailSender = new JavaMailSenderImpl();
        mailSender.setHost("smtp.gmail.com");
        mailSender.setPort(587);

        mailSender.setUsername(MyConstants.MY_EMAIL);
        mailSender.setPassword(MyConstants.MY_PASSWORD);

        Properties props = mailSender.getJavaMailProperties();
        props.put("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp");
        props.put("mail.smtp.auth", "true");
        props.put("mail.smtp.starttls.enable", "true");
        props.put("mail.debug", "true");

        return mailSender;
    }

}

MyConstants.java

package org.o7planning.sbmail;

public class MyConstants {

    // Replace with your email here:  
    public static final String MY_EMAIL = "yourEmail@gmail.com";

    // Replace password!!
    public static final String MY_PASSWORD = "yourPassword";

    // And receiver!
    public static final String FRIEND_EMAIL = "yourFriend@gmail.com";

}

4. Example of sending a simple Email

This is a very simple example, sending an email with ordinary text content.

SimpleEmailExampleController.java

package org.o7planning.sbmail.controller;

import org.o7planning.sbmail.MyConstants;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.mail.SimpleMailMessage;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

@Controller
public class SimpleEmailExampleController {

    @Autowired
    public JavaMailSender emailSender;

    @ResponseBody
    @RequestMapping("/sendSimpleEmail")
    public String sendSimpleEmail() {

        // Create a Simple MailMessage.
        SimpleMailMessage message = new SimpleMailMessage();
        
        message.setTo(MyConstants.FRIEND_EMAIL);
        message.setSubject("Test Simple Email");
        message.setText("Hello, Im testing Simple Email");

        // Send Message!
        this.emailSender.send(message);

        return "Email Sent!";
    }

}

http://localhost:8080/sendSimpleEmail

5. Send an Email attached with files

AttachmentEmailExampleController.java

package org.o7planning.sbmail.controller;

import java.io.File;

import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;

import org.o7planning.sbmail.MyConstants;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.core.io.FileSystemResource;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

@Controller
public class AttachmentEmailExampleController {

    @Autowired
    public JavaMailSender emailSender;

    @ResponseBody
    @RequestMapping("/sendAttachmentEmail")
    public String sendAttachmentEmail() throws MessagingException {

        MimeMessage message = emailSender.createMimeMessage();

        boolean multipart = true;

        MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, multipart);

        helper.setTo(MyConstants.FRIEND_EMAIL);
        helper.setSubject("Test email with attachments");
        
        helper.setText("Hello, Im testing email with attachments!");
        
        String path1 = "/home/tran/Downloads/test.txt";
        String path2 = "/home/tran/Downloads/readme.zip";

        // Attachment 1
        FileSystemResource file1 = new FileSystemResource(new File(path1));
        helper.addAttachment("Txt file", file1);

        // Attachment 2
        FileSystemResource file2 = new FileSystemResource(new File(path2));
        helper.addAttachment("Readme", file2);

        emailSender.send(message);

        return "Email Sent!";
    }

}

6. Send an email in HTML format

HtmlEmailExampleController.java

package org.o7planning.sbmail.controller;

import javax.mail.MessagingException;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;

import org.o7planning.sbmail.MyConstants;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.JavaMailSender;
import org.springframework.mail.javamail.MimeMessageHelper;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

@Controller
public class HtmlEmailExampleController {

    @Autowired
    public JavaMailSender emailSender;

    @ResponseBody
    @RequestMapping("/sendHtmlEmail")
    public String sendHtmlEmail() throws MessagingException {

        MimeMessage message = emailSender.createMimeMessage();

        boolean multipart = true;
        
        MimeMessageHelper helper = new MimeMessageHelper(message, multipart, "utf-8");
        
        String htmlMsg = "<h3>Im testing send a HTML email</h3>"
                +"<img src='http://www.apache.org/images/asf_logo_wide.gif'>";
        
        message.setContent(htmlMsg, "text/html");
        
        helper.setTo(MyConstants.FRIEND_EMAIL);
        
        helper.setSubject("Test send HTML email");
        
    
        this.emailSender.send(message);

        return "Email Sent!";
    }

}