VMime: C++ Mail Library

Connection time out

Vincent — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:08:00 +0200

By popular demand, it is now possible to handle time out during connection to IMAP, POP3 and SMTP servers.

There is nothing to change in your code to enjoy this new feature, at least if you already set a time out handler on the store (vmime::net::store::setTimeoutHandler). The same time out handler is used for connection and for data exchange after the connection has been opened.

Please note: for now, this is only available in VMime SVN, revision 559, and for POSIX platforms (this feature is not yet supported on Windows).

New feature: get parsed message from store

Vincent — Tue, 18 May 2010 18:33:00 +0200

Hi VMime users!

Let's focus today on a new feature in VMime 0.9. Until now, when you wanted to "explore" the contents of a vmime::net::message (that is, a message hosted on a IMAP or a POP3 store), you had to extract it entirely, or to use low-level fetch() and extract() functions on the message object.

Since the current development release of May 18th, there is a new helper function that will let you access the remote message like a "normal" vmime::message, and actually download the message data only when it is required (this only works for IMAP).

   // Connect to the IMAP store
   vmime::ref <vmime::net::session> sess = vmime::create <vmime::net::session>();

   vmime::utility::url storeURL("imap://username:password@imap.example.com");

   vmime::ref <vmime::net::store> store = sess->getStore(storeURL);
   store->connect();

   // Open the INBOX
   vmime::ref <vmime::net::folder> folder = store->getDefaultFolder();
   folder->open(vmime::net::folder::MODE_READ_WRITE);

   // Get the first message in the INBOX
   vmime::ref <vmime::net::message> msg = f->getMessage(1);

   // Construct the parsed message (a few data, header and structure,
   // is actually downloaded from the IMAP server)
   vmime::ref <vmime::message> parsedMsg = msg->getParsedMessage();

   // Here, extract() will actually download message data from the server
   vmime::utility::outputStreamAdapter out(std::cout);
   parsedMsg->getBody()->extract(out);

That's all folks! Update your source tree to the latest SVN head to enjoy this new feature.

Connecting to GMail SMTP

Vincent — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 09:12:00 +0200

Some users fequently ask me how to connect to GMail SMTP service with VMime. You have to connect to server using SMTP protocol (not SMTPS), and set the connection.tls property to true to initiate a secured connection using STARTTLS.

The following code is known to work:


vmime::utility::url url("smtp://smtp.gmail.com");

vmime::ref  tr = session->getTransport(url);

tr->setProperty("connection.tls", true);

tr->setProperty("auth.username", "gmail-login");

tr->setProperty("auth.password", "gmail-password");

tr->setProperty("options.need-authentication", true);

tr->setCertificateVerifier(yourCertificateVerifier);

Compiling VMime on MinGW/MSYS

Vincent — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:25:00 +0100

For those using VMime on Windows platform, someone has written a HOWTO to get VMime compiled, with all its dependencies, using MinGW. It's there: HOWTO: Compiling libvmime on MinGW/MSYS.

Major bug fixes

Vincent — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:07:00 +0100

Hello VMime users!

Thanks to László Vadócz, a possible segfault in stringUtils::countASCIIchars() has been fixed. A patch is available.

There was another major issue with body contents not generating when using streamContentHandler: EOF condition was not reset correctly when stream::reset() was called. The patch is available here.

GPL v3 and dual-licensing

Vincent — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:21:00 +0200

Hi all!

VMime has been relicensed under the GNU General Public License version 3. So, this will be the default license starting from version 0.9.1 (which is currently in development).

Additionally, due to a lot of demand, and to support development, VMime is now available under dual-licensing:

GNU GPL v3 for Free and Open Source projects. This is the default license for VMime.
Commercial license, for proprietary software. This license is available for purchase.

Please consult Licensing Overview and Dual-Licensing Model for more information about this.

New website

Vincent — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:56:00 +0200

The new website for VMime is now online!

Oh... and for those wondering if VMime is still maintained: YES, it is! In the last year, I had not much time to make releases but I worked on it from time to time (mainly bug fixes, no new features). Since I have a little more time now, I will try to post news here regularly.

Please note I am still looking for contributors as there is a lot of work to do, so please feel free to contact me if you are interested!

Build against libgnutls >= 2.8

Vincent — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 21:09:00 +0200

VMime 0.9.0 autoconf build process uses the libgnutls-config script to search for GNU TLS (by using AM_PATH_LIBGNUTLS). This script is deprecated and not shipped in gnutls 2.8.0 and later; pkg-config should now be used. Andreas Metzler provided a patch for fixing this.

Version 0.9.0 released

Vincent — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:19:00 +0200

Hello all!

Version 0.9.0 is (finally) out, with some refactoring, API changes and bug fixes. This is an excerpt from the ChangeLog :

File Attachments: fixed constructor ambiguity due to implicit conversions. Removed default values and reordered parameters (API breaking change). Many thanks to Philipp Frenkel. More information here.
Text/Words: fixed incorrect white-space between words.
IMAP: fixed bug in modified UTF-7 encoding.
Implemented thread-safe reference counting for smart pointers, whenever possible (GCC built-in functions / pthread / Win32).
SMTP: better parsing of ESMTP extensions.
Maildir: added support for "Courier" Maildir.

Is VMime thread-safe?

Vincent — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:04:00 +0200

VMime is thread-safe in the sense you can have multiple threads running VMime code at the same time.

What you may NOT do is to share VMime objects (for writing) between threads. For example, you should NOT modify the same bodyPart object from two threads at the same time (reading is OK) unless you write your own synchronization mechanism between the calls.

If you are using the messaging module, it is OK to access multiple mailboxes (store objects) from multiple threads (each thread accesses one mailbox).

The rest of the code (parser, utils, etc.) is thread-safe as long as (again...) you don't share the objects (body parts, mailboxes, etc.) between multiple threads.

There are some singleton objects in VMime. There is absolutely no problem when instanciating a VMime singleton for the first time within multi-threaded code. Instanciation of all singletons is forced when VMime is initialized (static code, executed before your main()).

Messages actually not deleted from a folder

Vincent — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:07:00 +0200

Q: I called deleteMessage() to delete a message from a store, but the message is not actually deleted!

A: Call folder->close(true) to expunge messages marked as deleted.

Version 0.8.1 released

Vincent — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 14:34:00 +0100

Version 0.8.1 is released: a lot of bugs fixed.

Imbue classic "C" locale for the output of message parts and protocol commands (thanks to Mörtsell Anders).
Renamed 'vmime::platformDependant' to 'vmime::platform'. The old name has been kept for compatibility with previous versions.
SMTP: reissue EHLO command after a successful STARTTLS negociation.
Word Encoder: fixed bug #1096610 which caused encoding of a non-integral number of characters (and then, generation of incorrectly-formed words) with multi-bytes charsets.
Fixed bugs in MHTML code: 'CID' prefix should not be case-sensitive; fixed detection of parts identified by a 'Content-Location'.
IMAP and Maildir: added vmime::net::folder::destroy() to delete folders.
Renamed 'byte' to 'byte_t' to fix compilation problems on Fedora core 5 (thanks to Rafael Fernandez).
IMAP: added a "relaxed" mode to IMAP parser to allow 8-bit characters where not allowed by the standard (thanks to Tim Teulings for having found the bug).
Added service::isSecuredConnection() and service::getConnectionInfos() to retrieve information about the connection.
Added support for attachments of type "message/rfc822".
IMAP: implemented multi-fetching. Now using "FETCH x:y" instead of sending (y-x+1) "FETCH" requests.
POSIX sockets: use getaddrinfo() if available. This should bring thread-safe DNS resolution and IPv6 support.
IMAP: compatibility bugs + enhanced debugging trace.
Exception: fixed segfault in destructor when destroying an exception chain with more than 2 elements (thanks to Bertrand Benoit).
POSIX: fixed a bug in argument vector; last argument was not NULL (thanks to Bertrand Benoit).
Maildir: fixed problem with ':' in filename on Windows platform (thanks to Benjamin Biron).
Utility: fixed buffer overrun in random::getString (thanks to Benjamin Biron).
SMTP: fixed bug in disconnect() when authentication is not needed (thanks to Benjamin Biron).
Utility: gmtime() and localtime() are reentrant when using MS C runtime library (MinGW/MSVC).

Version 0.8.0 released

Vincent — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 11:21:00 +0100

Version 0.8.0 is out, with SASL and TLS support.
The VMime Book (developer guide) is now available!

Refactored header field values and parameters.
Utility: new object charsetConverter for converting between charsets (code moved from static functions in 'charset' class). Added charsetFilteredOutputStream provide charset conversion while writing to an output stream.
Build: fixed compilation problems on FreeBSD (thanks to Xin LI).
Attachments: the attachmentHelper allows listing all attachments in a message, as well as adding new attachments.
Utility: renamed progressionListener to progressListener.
Messaging: removed "server.socket-factory" property; added the service::setSocketFactory() function instead. Removed "name" parameter from platformDependant::getSocketFactory() function.
Messaging: removed "timeout.factory" property; added the function service::setTimeoutHandlerFactory() instead. Removed the function platformDependant::getTimeoutHandlerFactory().
Added TLS/SSL support, using GNU TLS library.
Added SASL support, based on GNU SASL library. Slightly modified auhenticator object; see 'example6' which has been updated.
Utility: created 'vmime::security' and 'vmime::security::digest' namespaces. MD5 has been moved here. Added SHA-1 hash algorithm.
Encoder, Content Handler: added progression notifications.
Tests: moved to CppUnit for unit tests framework.
Renamed 'vmime::messaging' to 'vmime::net'. An alias has been kept for compatibility with previous versions (its use should be considered as deprecated).
Exception: vmime::exception now inherits from std::exception.
Messaging folder: added a FETCH_IMPORTANCE flag to fetch the fields used with 'misc::importanceHelper'.
POP3, IMAP, Maildir: fixed getMessages() when default arguments are given: no message were returned, instead of the real message count.
Attachments/Message parser: added a getName() parameter to retrieve the attachment filename either from the "filename" parameter of the "Content-Disposition" field, or from the "name" parameter of the "Content-Type" field (if available).
Added reference counting and smart pointers to simplify the use of VMime objects. Please see README.refcounting for more information.
Content Handler: added extractRaw() method to allow extracting data without performing any decoding.

Version 0.7.1 released

Vincent — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 19:47:00 +0200

Version 0.7.1 has been released.
A lot of bugs have been fixed. Added some minor enhancements.

Build: fixed compilation errors with g++ 4.0.
Core: fixed a bug in RFC-2231 implementation.
Core: fixed a bug in parsing, when the first character of word data was encoded in QP (thanks to Wolf Jiang).
Core: fixed a memory leak in parameterizedHeaderField destructor (thanks to Rafael Fernandez).
Messaging: added a 'peek' parameter to extract message contents without marking the message as seen.
IMAP: fixed bug in subfolders enumeration.
Examples: enhanced 'example6' into an interactive program to show some of the features of the messaging module.
Messaging: changed getAvailableProperties() to return 'serviceInfos::property' objects instead of strings. This permits setting service properties in a more generic manner.
IMAP: fixed missing space in "STATUS" command + parsing error in 'status_info'.
Utility: added a 'childProcess' class to help with spawning child processes (used in 'sendmail' implementation).
Added guide describing how to compile VMime using Visual Studio .NET 2003
Utility: moved progressionListener to 'vmime::utility' package since this can be of general use.
Utility: added a bufferedStreamCopy() function which can take a 'progressionListener' parameter.
Utility: added filtered input and output streams.
Added sendmail transport service for local delivery.
Core: fixed a bug in implementation of RFC-2231 (values were cut if longer than maxLineLength, and no line wrapping occured).
Utility: fixed a lot of bugs in URLs parsing and encoding/decoding + added unit tests. Moved 'url' and 'urlUtils' from 'vmime::messaging' namespace to 'vmime::utility' namespace.