Perform Gmail Search using IMAP in JAVA

Let say, if you come up with a scenario where you want to search a particular email or specific set of emails on a Gmail account using JAVA code, then below steps will solve your problem as you can easily automate GMAIL search using java-gmail-imap-1.4.4-gm-ext-0.5.jar

Steps

• Download JAR : java-gmail-imap-1.4.4-gm-ext-0.5.jar

• Add it to the build path of the project

Sample Code

NOTE 1 : Below code will use IMAP to read emails from GMAIL server

NOTE 2 : GmailRawSearchTerm class will be used to perform search on Gmail Server

NOTE 3 : Below code will search all the emails related to specific search keyword and will print the subject of emails

import java.util.Properties;

import org.junit.Test;

import com.google.code.com.sun.mail.imap.IMAPFolder;
import com.google.code.javax.mail.Folder;
import com.google.code.javax.mail.Message;
import com.google.code.javax.mail.Session;
import com.google.code.javax.mail.Store;
import com.google.code.javax.mail.search.GmailRawSearchTerm;

public class GmailSearch {

	// Enter search keyword here
	String search_keyword = "Testing Gmail Search";

	Properties prop;
	Session session;
	Store store;
	IMAPFolder inbox;
	GmailRawSearchTerm rawTerm;

	@Test
	public void test01() throws Exception {

		// pass search keyword to gmailSearch function
		gmailSearch(search_keyword);
	}

	public void gmailSearch(String search_keyword) throws Exception {
		try {
			prop = System.getProperties();
			prop.setProperty("mail.store.protocol", "imaps");
			session = Session.getDefaultInstance(prop, null);
			store = session.getStore("imaps");

			// Enter user name and password to connect to Gmail Account
			store.connect("imap.gmail.com", "username", "password");
			System.out.println("Connection established !!!!");

			inbox = (IMAPFolder) store.getFolder("INBOX");
			inbox.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);
			System.out.println("Total email counts in inbox : " + inbox.getMessageCount());

			rawTerm = new GmailRawSearchTerm(search_keyword);
			Message messagesFound[] = inbox.search(rawTerm);
			System.out.println("Messages found for Keyword : " + messagesFound.length);

			// Print subject of all messages found for search keyword
			System.out.println("***********Print subjects ***********************");
			for (Message message : messagesFound) {
				System.out.println(message.getSubject());
			}
			System.out.println("*********************************");
			System.out.println("Searching Completed !!!");

		} finally {
			if (inbox.isOpen()) {
				inbox.close(true);
			}
			store.close();
			System.out.println("Connection Closed !!!");
		}
	}

}

Kindly update the details mentioned below before executing above project :

a) Update the search term in above code

b) Update the Gmail Account credentials

NOTE : You can refer this document for search operators as you can improve your search using the operators mentioned in the doc

Output of above Code would look like :

If you really like the information provided above, please don’t forget to like us on Facebook, you can also leave the comment.