25. Mail Support

25.1 Mail-Sending Channel Adapter

Spring Integration provides support for outbound email with the MailSendingMessageHandler. It delegates to a configured instance of Spring's JavaMailSender:

 JavaMailSender mailSender = (JavaMailSender) context.getBean("mailSender");

 MailSendingMessageHandler mailSendingHandler = new MailSendingMessageHandler(mailSender);

MailSendingMessageHandler has various mapping strategies that use Spring's MailMessage abstraction. If the received Message's payload is already a MailMessage instance, it will be sent directly. Therefore, it is generally recommended to precede this consumer with a Transformer for non-trivial MailMessage construction requirements. However, a few simple Message mapping strategies are supported out-of-the-box. For example, if the message payload is a byte array, then that will be mapped to an attachment. For simple text-based emails, you can provide a String-based Message payload. In that case, a MailMessage will be created with that String as the text content. If you are working with a Message payload type whose toString() method returns appropriate mail text content, then consider adding Spring Integration's ObjectToStringTransformer prior to the outbound Mail adapter (see the example within Section 9.2, “The <transformer> Element” for more detail).

The outbound MailMessage may also be configured with certain values from the MessageHeaders. If available, values will be mapped to the outbound mail's properties, such as the recipients (TO, CC, and BCC), the from/reply-to, and the subject. The header names are defined by the following constants:

 MailHeaders.SUBJECT
 MailHeaders.TO
 MailHeaders.CC
 MailHeaders.BCC
 MailHeaders.FROM
 MailHeaders.REPLY_TO

25.2 Mail-Receiving Channel Adapter

Spring Integration also provides support for inbound email with the MailReceivingMessageSource. It delegates to a configured instance of Spring Integration's own MailReceiver interface, and there are two implementations: Pop3MailReceiver and ImapMailReceiver. The easiest way to instantiate either of these is by passing the 'uri' for a Mail store to the receiver's constructor. For example:

 MailReceiver receiver = new Pop3MailReceiver("pop3://usr:pwd@localhost/INBOX");

Another option for receiving mail is the IMAP "idle" command (if supported by the mail server you are using). Spring Integration provides the ImapIdleChannelAdapter which is itself a Message-producing endpoint. It delegates to an instance of the ImapMailReceiver but enables asynchronous reception of Mail Messages. There are examples in the next section of configuring both types of inbound Channel Adapter with Spring Integration's namespace support in the 'mail' schema.

25.3 Mail Namespace Support

Spring Integration provides a namespace for mail-related configuration. To use it, configure the following schema locations.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:mail="http://www.springframework.org/schema/integration/mail"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/integration/mail
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/integration/mail/spring-integration-mail-1.0.xsd">

To configure an outbound Channel Adapter, provide the channel to receive from, and the MailSender:

<mail:outbound-channel-adapter channel="outboundMail"
                              mail-sender="mailSender"/>

Alternatively, provide the host, username, and password:

<mail:outbound-channel-adapter channel="outboundMail"
                              host="somehost" username="someuser" password="somepassword"/>

[Note]Note
Keep in mind, as with any outbound Channel Adapter, if the referenced channel is a PollableChannel, a <poller> sub-element should be provided with either an interval-trigger or cron-trigger.

To configure an inbound Channel Adapter, you have the choice between polling or event-driven (assuming your mail server supports IMAP IDLE - if not, then polling is the only option). A polling Channel Adapter simply requires the store URI and the channel to send inbound Messages to. The URI may begin with "pop3" or "imap":

 <mail:inbound-channel-adapter channel="mailIn"
                               store-uri="imap://usr:[email protected]/INBOX">
     <poller max-messages-per-poll="3">
         <interval-trigger interval="30" time-unit="SECONDS"/>
     </poller>
 </mail:inbound-channel-adapter>

If you do have IMAP idle support, then you may want to configure the "imap-idle-channel-adapter" element instead. Since the "idle" command enables event-driven notifications, no poller is necessary for this adapter. It will send a Message to the specified channel as soon as it receives the notification that new mail is available:

 <mail:imap-idle-channel-adapter channel="mailIn"
                                 store-uri="imaps://usr:[email protected]:993/INBOX"/>

When using the namespace support, a header-enricher Message Transformer is also available. This simplifies the application of the headers mentioned above to any Message prior to sending to the Mail-sending Channel Adapter.

<mail:header-enricher subject="Example Mail"
                     to="[email protected]"
                     cc="[email protected]"
                     bcc="[email protected]"
                     from="[email protected]"
                     reply-to="[email protected]"
                     overwrite="false"/>