Question How do you delete a message from the mail server?

Derived from An unanswered question originally posed by Benjamin Alejandro Rodriguez Rengifo

Topics Java:API:JavaMail:IMAP4, Java:API:JavaMail:POP3

Author John Zukowski

Created 23-Feb-00 Modified 25-Jul-00

Answer

The basic process of deleting a message is to call setFlag() on the message and set the Flags.Flag.DELETED flag to true.

message.setFlag(Flags.Flag.DELETED, true);

Then, when you close the folder, deleted messages will be removed.

Be sure to open the folder for read/write access:

folder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);

The following program demonstrates listing each message in the folder and prompting for deletion:

import java.io.*;

import javax.mail.*;

import javax.mail.internet.*;

public class DeleteMessageExample {

public static void main (String args[]) throws Exception {

String host = args[0];

String username = args[1];

String password = args[2];

// Get session

Session session = Session.getInstance(

System.getProperties(), null);

// Get the store

Store store = session.getStore("pop3");

store.connect(host, username, password);

// Get folder

Folder folder = store.getFolder("INBOX");

folder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader (

new InputStreamReader(System.in));

// Get directory

Message message[] = folder.getMessages();

for (int i=0, n=message.length; i

System.out.println(i + ": " + message[i].getFrom()[0]

+ "\t" + message[i].getSubject());

System.out.println("Do you want to delete message? [YES to delete]");

String line = reader.readLine();

// Mark as deleted if appropriate

if ("YES".equals(line)) {

message[i].setFlag(Flags.Flag.DELETED, true);

}

}

// Close connection

folder.close(true);

store.close();

}

}

You can also expunge() the Folder. However, the POP3 server from Sun does not support this operation.