Core Java™ 2 Volume II - Advanced Features, Seventh Edition

Making URL Connections

In the last section, you saw how to use socket-level programming to connect to an SMTP server and send an e-mail message. It is nice to know that this can be done and to get a glimpse of what goes on “under the hood” of an Internet service such as e-mail. However, if you are planning an application that incorporates e-mail, you will probably want to work at a higher level and use a library that encapsulates the protocol details. For example, Sun Microsystems has developed the JavaMail API as a standard extension of the Java platform. In the JavaMail API, you simply issue a call such as

Transport.send(message);

to send a message. The library takes care of message protocols, multiple recipients, handling attachments, and ...