Accessing Imap in C# [closed]

Question

Is there a built-in method to access an Imap server (with SSL) in C# or is there a good free library?

Dermoid

duplicate: #546224 – Wasp

Nope. The link you posted is related to IMAP specifically for Gmail. This post, however, is not. – Diamonddiamondback

Please be more careful when saying/marking questions as duplicates. I'm sick of seeing "duplicate: [link] everywhere. A lot of the time the other links fail to answer what the "Duplicator" wants to know anyway, whether it's the same question or not! – Fernandefernandel

Question closed so I can't add this as an answer: github.com/jstedfast/MailKit seems to be a good option and an active project. – Mcelhaney

Marking useful questions as not constructive is indeed not constructive... – Blairblaire

Police state. Thanks for this question - it was super constructive and solved my issue. StackOverflow seems to be short on answers for this pertinent question. – Overreact

github.com/jstedfast/MailKit - Open Source has millions of NuGet downloads – Longerich

Answer 1

I've been searching for an IMAP solution for a while now, and after trying quite a few, I'm going with AE.Net.Mail.

You can download the code by going to the Code tab and click the small 'Download' icon. As the author does not provide any pre-built downloads, you must compile it yourself. (I believe you can get it through NuGet though). There is no longer a .dll in the bin/ folder.

There is no documentation, which I consider a downside, but I was able to whip this up by looking at the source code (yay for open source!) and using Intellisense. The below code connects specifically to Gmail's IMAP server:

// Connect to the IMAP server. The 'true' parameter specifies to use SSL
// which is important (for Gmail at least)
ImapClient ic = new ImapClient("imap.gmail.com", "[email protected]", "pass",
                ImapClient.AuthMethods.Login, 993, true);
// Select a mailbox. Case-insensitive
ic.SelectMailbox("INBOX");
Console.WriteLine(ic.GetMessageCount());
// Get the first *11* messages. 0 is the first message;
// and it also includes the 10th message, which is really the eleventh ;)
// MailMessage represents, well, a message in your mailbox
MailMessage[] mm = ic.GetMessages(0, 10);
foreach (MailMessage m in mm)
{
    Console.WriteLine(m.Subject);
}
// Probably wiser to use a using statement
ic.Dispose();

Make sure you checkout the Github page for the newest version and some better code examples.

Thereabout

This looks too easy to be true lol. I'm gonna check it out! – Ed

@jase - You're right! I'm not sure what the problem is exactly (seems like the properties file?) but I was able to get it to compile by copying all relevant files into a new class project. Whatever the case, I built the libraries for you and so you can add them as .dll references to your project. dl.dropbox.com/u/8037514/AE.Net.Mail.zip Just as a disclaimer, this comes with whatever warranties and copyrights the original project comes with, and I'm not responsible if it blows up, etc etc. Good luck! – Thereabout

@jase - No problem! Glad to have helped! – Thereabout

Just want to say that it works nicely, it's available on nuget, and the author provide very good support! – Rivarivage

+1 I just downloaded and compiled the latest commit of AE.Net.Mail in VS2010, and it worked perfectly. I had a much better experience than with ImapX, thanks for the tip. The code here gave me a good jumpstart. – Harelip

This saved me so much time, thanks! You can get it from nugget for an easy install. – Chimb

This totally worked. I got the library using NuGet. DMan, you trully are The Man. – Fateful

@Fateful - Glad to have helped, but of course, all credits go to Andy Edinborough who made the library! – Thereabout

I'm using it from nuget and works great. – Internment

This library throws a lot of exceptions – Gutter

It does not build if you build the whole solution; but if you just build the class library project (do not build tests) it works just fine – Paraboloid

Does this support oAuth 2 i.e. sending a token instead of passing password? – Dyanne

why do people go and write great things like this and then include basically no documentation? I don't understand – Cinchonism

watch out for one (in my opinion) bad design decision with GetMessage and that is that the hasSeen parameter defaults to true so it will mark all messages as read. if you're reading emails from a mailbox that a human is also reading you probably don't want this – Cinchonism

There is nuget package for this. Check in the GitHub page github.com/andyedinborough/aenetmail – Dael

It works but in newer versions the constructor should look like this: ImapClient ic = new ImapClient("imap.gmail.com", "[email protected]", "pass", AuthMethods.Login, 993, true); – Denouement

Anyone knows how i can get idea about thread , I want show message in thread can i ? – Tailstock

Alternatively, you can download AE.Net.Mail from Nuget: PM> Install-Package AE.Net.Mail. IMap is available in the package – Glidden

Works great! Thanks.... – Devi

I think AE.Net.Mail is to buggy, could not get headers through imap in some cases for instance. Check out github.com/jstedfast/MailKit instead. – Denouement

Here's the NuGet package: nuget.org/packages/AE.Net.Mail – Chuck

Answer 2

In the hope that it will be useful to some, you may want to check out my go at it:

S22.Imap

While there are a couple of good and well-documented IMAP libraries for .NET available, none of them are free for personal, let alone commercial use...and I was just not all that satisfied with the mostly abandoned free alternatives I found.

S22.Imap supports IMAP IDLE notifications as well as SSL and partial message fetching. I have put some effort into producing documentation and keeping it up to date, because with the projects I found, documentation was often sparse or non-existent.

Feel free to give it a try and let me know if you run into any issues!

Lemur

Tried AE.Net.Mail first and found S22.Imap to be better, both on documentation and on features I have needed so far. – Provisional

I liked to concept of S22.Imap. But What I am missing is accessing via index or message number. – Dael

300 Cheers for S22.Imap. Simple Efficient and Useful in real world scenarios. The .Search() i sbrilliant – Circumstantiality

How can I keep synchronization for my mailbox with IMAP using this library? – Devi

Any ideas why I'd get an InvalidCredentialsException with a message of "NO [WEBALERT some url] Web login required" when trying to login? IMAP is enabled on the Gmail account. Ideas? – Chuck

Got going in no time at all. I like that it uses the default .Net mail classes too. – Overreact

Are there any plans to create async overloads for the methods? – Mash

Answer 3

There is no .NET framework support for IMAP. You'll need to use some 3rd party component.

Try https://www.limilabs.com/mail, it's very affordable and easy to use, it also supports SSL:

using(Imap imap = new Imap())
{
    imap.ConnectSSL("imap.company.com");
    imap.Login("user", "password");

    imap.SelectInbox();
    List<long> uids = imap.SearchFlag(Flag.Unseen);
    foreach (long uid in uids)
    {
        string eml = imap.GetMessageByUID(uid);
        IMail message = new MailBuilder()
            .CreateFromEml(eml);

        Console.WriteLine(message.Subject);
        Console.WriteLine(message.TextDataString);
    }
    imap.Close(true);
}

Please note that this is a commercial product I've created.

You can download it here: https://www.limilabs.com/mail.

Goral

Downloaded and was up and running in a few minutes :) Very nice – Cautery

Does it support passing a token using oAuth 2 instead of passing password? – Dyanne

It does support OAuth2: limilabs.com/blog/oauth2-gmail-imap-web-applications – Goral

Great component, works like a charm. Tested the trial version (almost fully functional) for a couple of weeks then bought a license. – Sayres

This is a great component indeed. Unlike all the open-source stuff we tried, this one is actually alive and up-to-date (I'm writing this in 2016). Thank you @PawelLesnikowski PS. I'm not affiliated in any way. – Stamm

the best one i found and so easy to setup and use wow! – Mcmanus

Answer 4

MailSystem.NET contains all your need for IMAP4. It's free & open source.

(I'm involved in the project)

Thier

the project is active ?? latest version dated: Mon Dec 14 2009 at 9:00 AM – Admire

There is not so much feature to add today as most needs are already covered. Only bug fixes and small improvements are commited when they are submitted. But there are not so many, the library is very robust. – Thier

Can I use it for get messages from Exchange 2003 ? – Admire

If you are using POP3 or IMAP4 why not? If you want to use webdav, you have to look for another library. – Thier

This project seems to be dead. Does not work with IMAP4 properly, no updates and no answers from authors – Solis

@Denis: ask to the other users mailsystem.codeplex.com/discussions because the open source version is not supported by the authors – Thier

I think its better for IMAP and Gmail... Thanks – Riendeau

@alhambraeidos and @Denis are correct. The project is practically dead. The samples do not build, out of the box, in either VS 2008 or 2010. I upconverted them then had to wade through 16 reference issues. The documentation is out of date and the CodePlex page sit unanswered for any issues/comments in the past year or more. I gave up and ended up purchasing Mail.dll (no, I'm not affiliated with them). – Litchfield

Not only project is dead, but project is not coded correctly, instead of using RegEx or little better way of parsing, String.IndexOf with hardcoded literals break the normal functionality and is less extensible as well. – Maxia

@AkashKava: standard parsing was prefered to RegEx for obvious performances reasons. – Thier

I know, parsing is very complex, but better way would be to either incorporate REGEX or use ANTLR kind of parser, where it is easy to parse and build an object structure easily. I see that you have put in lot of time in making the library, but at the same time, its little difficult to modify it and use it properly, same is problem with other paid alternatives as well, their code also break and is difficult to trace. We have used ANTLR for parsing and without it, its just nightmare. – Maxia

project is pretty dead, IDLE does not work properly mailsystem.codeplex.com/workitem/23586 – Candlepower

Seems like all the things mentioned above have been implemented now and looks quite promising . And apparently SiteCore use it.. which is a big money making CMS so maybe theygave it new breath of life. Im gonna try this one – Longerich

Answer 5

Try use the library : https://imapx.codeplex.com/

That library free, open source and have example at this : https://imapx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=Sample%20code%20for%20get%20messages%20from%20your%20inbox

Carat

FYI: imapx does not seem to support IDLE – Candlepower

ImapX has support for the IDLE extension now. – Inimical

this library in my experience is significant slower than AE.Net.Mail - that makes no sense whatsoever but be warned! – Cinchonism

This library contains major bugs (v2.0.0.18). – Endo

Answer 6

I haven't tried it myself, but this is a free library you could try (I not so sure about the SSL part on this one):

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/IP/imaplibrary.aspx

Also, there is xemail, which has parameters for SSL:

http://xemail-net.sourceforge.net/

[EDIT] If you (or the client) have the money for a professional mail-client, this thread has some good recommendations:

Recommendations for a .NET component to access an email inbox

Maryannemarybella

the Imaplibrary at codeproject is what I was using but it does not have the needed functionality Ill checkout xemail – Dermoid

#87053 , ,I get this error: page not found – Admire

I changed the link, thank you for letting me know. – Maryannemarybella

REE: codeproject.com/KB/IP/imaplibrary.aspx in your answer; It's pretty cool. Have been using it since last week for an email client and haven't had any problems with it. – Fernandefernandel