Read pop3 email attachments component

How simple it is to read your first hotmail email? Check it out here

    You came here to read pop3 email using C#.net.  after reading all below mentioned steps,

You would be able to create your own email component to read POP3 email.

In this article I will explore how to read your pop3 email using C#.

It will help you to parse email attachment, found as BASE64 string and convert it into Binary.

Note* there are very few commands required to communicate with pop3 server.

e.g. 1. LIST  2. RETR 3. STAT 4. USER 5. PASS 6. DELE 7. QUIT

If you search over the net about RFC POP3 then you will get more details about these commands.

Let us see how to use these pop3 commands.

Here we will open connection with your pop3 server and to this stream we will authonticate your request,
read email, using those pop3 commands.

    We will use System.Net and Socket programming to achieve our goal.

Below is  self explanatory core library  that will send POP3 commands to your pop3 server

using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Text; using System.Net; using System.Net.Sockets; using System.Net.Security; using System.IO; using System.Threading; public class TCPclient { private string _popServer;public string PopServer { get{return _popServer;} set{_popServer = value;} }   private int _popPort;public int PopPort { get{return _popPort;} set{_popPort = value;} } private string _loginName;public string LoginName { get{return _loginName;} set{_loginName = value;} } private string _password;public string Password { get{return _password;} set{_password = value;} } private string _email;private string Email { get { return _email; } set { _email = value; } } TcpClient tcpclient = new TcpClient(); NetworkStream ntstrm; StreamReader strmR; StreamWriter strmW; public void Connect() { if (!tcpclient.Connected) { tcpclient.Connect(_popServer, _popPort); ntstrm = tcpclient.GetStream(); strmR = new StreamReader(ntstrm); strmW = new StreamWriter(ntstrm);strmW.WriteLine( "USER " + _loginName); strmW.Flush(); strmW.WriteLine("PASS " + _password); strmW.Flush(); } } public string SendCommand(string command) { string strTemp = command; //foreach(string str in parm) //{ // command+=" " ; // command+=str; //} //strmW.WriteLine("LIST"); //strmW.Flush(); strmW.WriteLine(command); strmW.Flush(); return GetResponse(command); } private string GetResponse(string command) { string line = string.Empty; Thread.Sleep(2000); if (command == "STAT") { line = strmR.ReadLine(); } else { Thread.Sleep(3000);byte[] arrResponse = new byte[10000000]; ntstrm.Read(arrResponse, 0, arrResponse.Length); string str = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(arrResponse); return str; }   return line; } public void CloseConnection() { tcpclient.Close(); ntstrm.Close(); strmR.Close(); strmW.Close(); } }

Now, create you ASPx page  That will accept POP3 server Name , User name , Password, and port number genrally its 110 to read unsecure email.

TCPclient tcpclient = new TCPclient(); private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { string response = string.Empty;   tcpclient.PopServer = txtPop.Text; tcpclient.PopPort = int.Parse(txtPort.Text); tcpclient.LoginName = txtUserName.Text; tcpclient.Password = txtPassword.Text; tcpclient.Connect(); response = tcpclient.SendCommand("LIST");response = tcpclient.SendCommand( "STAT"); // Regex re = new Regex(); MatchCollection mc = Regex.Matches(response, @"\bOK\s\d+\s\b");foreach (Match m in mc) {     txtResponse.Text = tcpclient.SendCommand("RETR " + m.Value.Replace("OK",""));     if (txtResponse.Text.IndexOf("attachment") != -1)    {       // Here we will parse the attachemnt       code to parse email and find attachments       StoreAttachments();     }  } } public void StoreAttachments() { List<string> lstFilename = new List<string>(); Regex reFilename = new Regex(@"\bfilename=\""(.*)\b"); MatchCollection mFilename = reFilename.Matches(txtResponse.Text); foreach (Match mf in mFilename) { lstFilename.Add(mf.Groups[1].Value); }   foreach (string strfileName in lstFilename) { writeFile(strfileName,             parseValue(txtResponse.Text,@"Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="""+ strfileName+ "\"","--",false)); } } private void writeFile(string fileName, string fileContent) { try { FileStream fs = new FileStream(@"c:\" + fileName, FileMode.CreateNew); fs.Write(Convert.FromBase64String(fileContent),0,                Convert.FromBase64String(fileContent).Length); fs.Close(); } catch (Exception ex) {  // see if any exception here } }

Parse attachment The BASE 64 string  / find BASE 64 string in email

private string parseValue(String responseBody, String prefix, String posix, bool include1) { String action; int i; //try to find the first type i = responseBody.IndexOf(prefix); if (i >= 0) { if (include1) { action = responseBody.Substring(i); } else { action = responseBody.Substring(i + prefix.Length); } if (!posix.Equals("")) action = action.Substring(0, action.IndexOf(posix)); return action.Trim(); } throw new Exception("Value '" + prefix + "' not found"); }

 

Satalaj