Internet Message Access Protocol

The SocketTools Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) control is used to access a user's e-mail messages which are stored on a mail server. The control implements the current standard for this protocol, and provides functions to retrieve messages, or just certain parts of a message, create and manage mailboxes, search for specific messages based on certain criteria and so on. To download a free evaluation copy of SocketTools or for more information about this component, please select one of the following links:

ActiveX Control Overview

The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an application protocol which is functionally similar to the Post Office Protocol (POP3). However, unlike POP3 where messages are downloaded and processed on the local system, the messages on an IMAP server are retained on the server and processed remotely. This is ideal for users who need access to a centralized store of messages or have limited bandwidth. For example, traveling salesmen who have notebook computers or mobile users on a wireless network would be ideal candidates for using IMAP.

Another advantage that IMAP has is support for multiple mailboxes. Rather than just accessing the user's Inbox, the IMAP protocol allows users to create additional mailbox folders, store, delete and retrieve messages from them, as well as move messages from one mailbox to another. Mailboxes can also contain other mailboxes, supporting a hierarchical structure. The SocketTools IMAP control gives you complete control over the mailboxes and messages stored in them, enabling your application to integrate mail client functionality in your own application.

This control can also support secure connections using the standard SSL and TLS protocols. A SocketTools Secure Visual Edition license must be purchased to use the security features in this component.

Control Features

The following are just some of the features in the SocketTools Internet Message Access Protocol control:

  • Standard ATL based ActiveX control compatible with most languages
  • Low resource utilization and no external dependencies on third-party libraries
  • Fully compatible with Visual Studio .NET languages
  • Manage multiple mailboxes for the same user account
  • Download messages from the mail server to the local system
  • Search for specific messages that meet the criteria that you specify
  • Compose and upload messages to a mailbox
  • Includes both high level and lower level interfaces for maximum flexibility
  • Support for both synchronous and asynchronous network connections
  • Thread-safe implementation with full support for multithreaded applications
  • An extensive Developer's Guide and online Technical Reference
  • A professional technical support staff and extensive online support resources
  • No runtime licensing fees or additional royalties
  • A trusted company with over 10 years experience developing Internet components

Code Example

The following code example in Visual Basic demonstrates how the control can be used to retrieve all the messages from a user's Inbox and store them on the local system:

' Connect to the specified IMAP server, authenticating with a
' username and password provided by the user
nError = ImapClient1.Connect(strHostName, , strUserName, strPassword)
If nError <> 0 Then
    MsgBox ImapClient1.LastErrorString, vbExclamation
    Exit Sub
End If

' Select the default Inbox mailbox. This is the mailbox in which
' all new messages are stored.
nError = ImapClient1.SelectMailbox("Inbox")
If nError <> 0 Then
    MsgBox ImapClient1.LastErrorString, vbExclamation
    Exit Sub
End If

' For each message that is available in the user's Inbox, retrieve
' it and store it on a local text file
For nMessage = 1 To ImapClient1.MessageCount
    strFileName = strMailDir & "\message" & nMessage & ".txt"
    nError = ImapClient1.StoreMessage(nMessage, strFileName)
    If nError <> 0 Then
        MsgBox ImapClient1.LastErrorString, vbExclamation
        Exit Sub
    End If
Next

' Disconnect from the mail server
ImapClient1.Disconnect

In this example, there are four methods that are called: Connect, which establishes the connection to the mail server; SelectMailbox which selects the current mailbox that will be used; StoreMessage which retrieves the contents of the message and stores it in a file on the local system; and Disconnect, which closes the connection to the server.

As you can see, most of the code is actually related to error checking and comments, with only a few lines of code required to retrieve the messages from the server. If you wanted to store the contents of the message in a string or byte array, then you would use the GetMessage method instead but all of the other code would remain the same. You could also use this control in conjunction with the Mail Message control to parse the contents of the message and display specific portions of the message to the end user.

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