AspPOP3 2.x

About AspPOP3

AspPOP3 allows you to receive mail using the industry standard POP3 protocol from any program that can use ActiveX/OLE components. Features include:

POP3 (retrieve) Messages

Multiple File Attachments

File attachments support MIME and UUEncoding

US Ascii and ISO-8859-1 character sets

Exposes standard headers via properties and special properties via a method.

Changes in AspPOP3 2.0

AspPOP3 2.0 builds on the functionality of AspPOP3 1.0 by replacing the POP3 "plumbing" with an improved implementation, provides automatic decoding of file attachments, provides a complete type library and provides dual interface support.

AspPOP3 Installation

To use this ASP component move the DLL into a subdirectory (like \winnt\system32 for NT or \windows\system for Win95). Please use the version of regsvr32 that is included with this component or the version that comes with Microsoft ASP (they are the same version).

To register the component on the system change to the directory where you installed the DLL and type:

regsvr32 pop3svg.dll

You may need to modify this example based on the directory you have installed the component to.

Simple Retrieve Mail Example

Using the component is as simple as

Creating the object

Setting a few properties

Calling the Retrieve method

The following code demonstrates how to use AspPOP3 from VBScript.
Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("POP3svg.Mailer")
Mailer.RemoteHost = "mailhost.localisp.net"
Mailer.UserName   = "myname"
Mailer.Password   = "mypassword"
Mailer.MailDirectory = "d:\usermail\myname"
Mailer.OpenPop3

rem We could do multiple retrieves here but this demo only shows the
rem  selected message.


Mailer.MailDirectory = "d:\usermail\myname"
Mailer.RetrieveToFile 1, "1.txt"
Mailer.ClosePop3
The file d:\usermail\myname\1.txt now holds the complete message text for this message. You could optionally do the following:
Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("POP3svg.Mailer")
Mailer.RemoteHost = "mailhost.localisp.net"
Mailer.UserName   = "myname"
Mailer.Password   = "mypassword"
Mailer.OpenPop3

rem We could do multiple retrieves here but this demo only shows the
rem  selected message.


Mailer.Retrieve 1
Mailer.ClosePop3
You can now use Mailer's properties to examine each part of the message. For example:
Mailer.MessageID
Mailer.Date
Mailer.Subject
Mailer.FromName
Mailer.FromAddress
Mailer.BodyText
And so on, contain the respective message properties.
Notes About Creating the Pop3 Object

You can create the mailer object at three different points in time:

Immediately before retrieving email

At the application scope

At the session scope

You will have to decide when and where it is appropriate to create the object based on your particular application. If you aren't sure which way to create the object reference, or for typical usage, you should create the object immediately before retrieving your email. Your code would look like this:
Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("POP3svg.Mailer")
... [Set properties]
if Mailer.Retrive intMsgNo then ...
Creating these local references, as demonstrated above, allow you to use the object on multiple application threads at the same time.

If you wish to create and reuse the object at the application or session scope you must insure that only one user is using the application or session object reference using some queing mechanism. To create an object reference at the application scope your code would look something like this:
if Not IsObject (Application("Mailer")) then
  Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("POP3svg.Mailer")
  Application.Lock
  Set Application("Mailer") = Mailer
  Application.Unlock
else
  Response.write "Cached application object reference being used<p>"
  Set Mailer = Application("Mailer")
end if
Finally, to create an object reference at the session level, your code might look something like this:
if Not IsObject (session("Mailer")) then
  Set Mailer = Server.CreateObject("POP3svg.Mailer")
  Set session("Mailer") = Mailer
else
  Response.write "Cached session object reference being used<p>"
  Set Mailer = session("Mailer")
end if
About purchasing AspPOP3

The registration license fee covers only one CPU per license.Dual CPU systems require one license for each CPU. You can purchase by following the link from http://www.serverobjects.com/products.html.

About Upgrades

Users can upgrade for free for minor version changes. For example, upgrades from version 1.00 to 1.99 are free. The upgrade from 1.99 to 2.0 may carry an additional license fee.

The latest version of the components are always available at http://www.serverobjects.com/products.html. If a fee is associated with obtaining the upgrade it will be noted on that page.

Upgrade Instructions

To upgrade the component from a previous version please follow these steps:

Stop all IIS related services such as Gopher, FTP and W3SVC.

Change to the directory where the component is located and type "regsvr32 /u pop3svg.dll"

Move the new copy of pop3svg.dll to the current directory and type "regsvr32 pop3svg.dll"

Restart the necessary services.

Questions about AspPOP3
WebTV attachments appear as part of the message body. Yes, that's correct. For whatever reason, the WebTV developers decided to create attachments "inline" to the standard message body. AspPOP3 does not currently support inline'd attachments. We are not aware of any other software packages that automatically create inline'd attachments.

How do I change the status of the message (read / unread etc.) You don't. Most servers do not provide an interface to change the message status manually. This is an automated process so that once the body text is retrieved the message status is automatically updated.

Message status is not being updated or is not returned. Some servers (some or all versions of Exchange) don't provide POP3 message status. If AspPOP3 is not returning a status value, then the value is not being returned by your server.

When I use your examples and click on a message I get nothing but a string of ????'s. What's wrong? That indicates that the user (user the anon IIS user) lacks security to write or read to the location specified by the MailDirectory property.
I cannot get the component to return the MessageID field [or some other value]. What's wrong. Here's my code:
If Mailer.GetPopHeader (1) Then
  Response.Write Mailer.GetHeaderField("Message-Id")
End If
Either the value does not exists or more likely you are unaware of the fact that MessageID values are surrounded by the characters < and > which makes it look like an HTML tag to many browsers, therefore the value is getting sent to the browser (do a View Source) but it is not getting rendered onto the browser screen because it appears to be an [invalid] HTML tag to the browser rendering engine. The solution is to string replace the < > characters with < > which will then display literal <> values around the MessageID
Technical Support

If you require technical support please see our tech support page at http://www.serverobjects.com/support.html

AspPOP3 Properties
AttContentType
Contains the ContentType for a message attachment after you call Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo.
Example:
if Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then
  Response.Write "ContentType=" & Mailer.AttContentType
AttFileName
Contains the FileName for a message attachment after you call Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo.
Example:
if Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then
  Response.Write "FileName=" & Mailer.AttFileName
AttFileSize
Contains the FileSize for a message attachment after you call Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo.
Example:
if Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then
  Response.Write "File Size=" & Mailer.AttFileSize
AttachmentCount
After you have retrieved a message the AttachmentCount property contains the number of attachements that were found within the message.
Example:
Mailer.Retrieve intMsgNumber
Response.Write "This message has " & _
  Mailer.AttachmentCount & " attachments"
BodyText
After you have retrieved a message the BodyText property contains the message text. This does not include header information which is accessed via other properties and one method.
Example:
Mailer.Retrieve intMsgNumber
Response.Write "This message is " & _
  Mailer.BodyText
CC The CC property contains any CarbonCopy addresses the message was sent to.

Error The Error property returns any error message if a failure is detected by the component.
Encoding
The encoding type used for the message.
Valid values:

1 = UUEncoded

2 = MIME

Example:
If Mailer.Encoding = 1 then Response.Write "UUEncoded"
Expires If the component is an eval version the expires property will return the date that the component quits functioning.
Example:

Response.Write "Component Expires: " & Mailer.Expires
FromAddress
The message originator’s email address.
Example:
Response.Write "From " & Mailer.FromAddress
FromName
The message originator’s name.
Example:
Response.Write "From " & Mailer.FromName
MailDirectory The MailDirectory property specifies where mail messages will be written to.
MessageCount
The MessageCount property indicates how many messages are located on the server. This property is updated when the GetPopHeaders method is called or when MessageCount is 0.
Example:
if Mailer.MessageCount = 0 then
  Response.Write "There are no messages on the server."
end if
MessageID The MessageID property returns the MessageID header for the Retrieved message.

MessageInfo The MessageInfo property returns the header data that is received from a call to GetPopHeaders. After a call to GetPopHeaders, and if there are messages on the server, this property is a variant array of variant arrays that contains information about the messages on the server.
Values returned are: intMessageID, strSubject, strDate, strFrom, strSender ,strTo, strReplyTo, intSize, strStatus.

Password Password is the password of the account on the POP3 server that you will be retrieving messages for. This is used along with UserName to log into the POP server.

Pop3Log You can debug a POP3 session by assigning a path and filename to the POP3Log property. The complete POP3 session will be written to this file. Be sure the logged in user under IIS has permission to write to this file. Do NOT use this in a multi-user environment. This is only for debugging.
Priority
Gets the message priority. Priorities are 1-5 and are reflected in the X-Priority header.
Valid values:

1 – High

3 – Normal

5 – Low

Example:
if Mailer.Priority = 1 then
  Response.Write "This message is high priority"
end if
Recipients The Recipients property contains any To: addresses the message was sent to.

RemoteHost RemoteHost property should be set to the host name or IP address of the POP3 server you will be pulling messages from.
ReturnReceipt
The ReturnReceipt flag.
Example:
If Mailer.ReturnReceipt then
  rem User expected return receipt on this message
end if
Subject The Subject property returns the Subject of the message that you have retrieved.

TimeOut Sets the maximum time to wait for a response from the POP3 server.

UserName UserName is the user name of the account on the POP3 server that you will be retrieving messages for. This is used along with Password to log into the POP server.

Version Returns the version of the Pop3 component.
AspPOP3 Component Methods

Method Parameters Return Value Description

ClosePop3 None N/A Quits the current POP3 session and closes the connection.

Delete Integer value indicating which message on the server to delete. True/False Permanently deletes the specified message from the server.

EraseFile String value indicating full path to file you want to erase. True/False Permanently deletes a file from the local drive. This is used to clean up messages that are written to disk using the RetrieveToFile method.

GetAttachmentInfo Integer value indicating which message attachment you want to get the properties for. N/A GetAttachment Info will get the properties for the specified attachment and fill in the AttContentType, AttFileName and AttFileSize properties.

GetHeaderField String value indicating which header field you want to return String value with header field info. GetHeaderField is provided so that you can query the current message for any specific header field information that isn't provided through AspPOP3 properties.

GetPopHeader Integer value indicating the message number to retrieve the header for. True or False GetPopHeader allows you to retrieve the header information for one message instead of all messages. See GetPopHeaders to retrieve all message headers.

GetPopHeaders None True or False GetPopHeaders provides a simple interface to retrieving information about each message on the server. This makes it easy to present a list of message info. The examples provided with AspPOP3, WebMail and WebMail2 provide good examples of how to use this method.

OpenPop3 None True or False The OpenPop3 method opens the connection to the POP3 RemoteHost using the UserName and Password properties.

Retrieve Integer value indicating which message to retrieve from the POP3 server. True or False The Retrieve method will retrieve the entire message from the POP3 server including any attachments. Once you have used Retrieve to get a valid message the AspPOP3 properties are filled in with the appropriate values and any attachments are available using the attachment methods/properties.

RetrieveToFile Integer value indicating which message and a string value indicating the filename to save to. True or False RetrieveToFile simply pulls the message without processing anything. The entire message including any attachments is saved to the file.

RetrieveToMemory Integer value indicating which message to retrive strMsg - the unprocessed message in string format Retrieves the specified message and returns the message in an unprocessed form.

SaveAttachment intAttachment
Integer value indicating which attachment to save.
True or False SaveAttachment will save an attachment to the MailDirectory's path. SaveAttachment will attempt to determine the proper file name before saving.

SaveAttachmentToFile intAttachment, strFileName
Integer value indicating which attachment to save and a pathless filename to save the attachment into.
True or False SaveAttachment will save an attachment to the MailDirectory's path. SaveAttachmentToFile uses strFileName as the filename to save the message to.
© Copyright 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 by ServerObjects Inc.

WebTV attachments appear as part of the message body.	Yes, that's correct. For whatever reason, the WebTV developers decided to create attachments "inline" to the standard message body. AspPOP3 does not currently support inline'd attachments. We are not aware of any other software packages that automatically create inline'd attachments.
How do I change the status of the message (read / unread etc.)	You don't. Most servers do not provide an interface to change the message status manually. This is an automated process so that once the body text is retrieved the message status is automatically updated.
Message status is not being updated or is not returned.	Some servers (some or all versions of Exchange) don't provide POP3 message status. If AspPOP3 is not returning a status value, then the value is not being returned by your server.
When I use your examples and click on a message I get nothing but a string of ????'s. What's wrong?	That indicates that the user (user the anon IIS user) lacks security to write or read to the location specified by the MailDirectory property.
I cannot get the component to return the MessageID field [or some other value]. What's wrong. Here's my code: If Mailer.GetPopHeader (1) Then Response.Write Mailer.GetHeaderField("Message-Id") End If	Either the value does not exists or more likely you are unaware of the fact that MessageID values are surrounded by the characters < and > which makes it look like an HTML tag to many browsers, therefore the value is getting sent to the browser (do a View Source) but it is not getting rendered onto the browser screen because it appears to be an [invalid] HTML tag to the browser rendering engine. The solution is to string replace the < > characters with < > which will then display literal <> values around the MessageID

AttContentType	Contains the ContentType for a message attachment after you call Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo. Example: if Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then Response.Write "ContentType=" & Mailer.AttContentType
AttFileName	Contains the FileName for a message attachment after you call Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo. Example: if Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then Response.Write "FileName=" & Mailer.AttFileName
AttFileSize	Contains the FileSize for a message attachment after you call Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo. Example: if Mailer.GetAttachmentInfo (intCount) then Response.Write "File Size=" & Mailer.AttFileSize
AttachmentCount	After you have retrieved a message the AttachmentCount property contains the number of attachements that were found within the message. Example: Mailer.Retrieve intMsgNumber Response.Write "This message has " & _ Mailer.AttachmentCount & " attachments"
BodyText	After you have retrieved a message the BodyText property contains the message text. This does not include header information which is accessed via other properties and one method. Example: Mailer.Retrieve intMsgNumber Response.Write "This message is " & _ Mailer.BodyText
CC	The CC property contains any CarbonCopy addresses the message was sent to.
Error	The Error property returns any error message if a failure is detected by the component.
Encoding	The encoding type used for the message. Valid values: 1 = UUEncoded 2 = MIME Example: If Mailer.Encoding = 1 then Response.Write "UUEncoded"
Expires	If the component is an eval version the expires property will return the date that the component quits functioning. Example: Response.Write "Component Expires: " & Mailer.Expires
FromAddress	The message originator’s email address. Example: Response.Write "From " & Mailer.FromAddress
FromName	The message originator’s name. Example: Response.Write "From " & Mailer.FromName
MailDirectory	The MailDirectory property specifies where mail messages will be written to.
MessageCount	The MessageCount property indicates how many messages are located on the server. This property is updated when the GetPopHeaders method is called or when MessageCount is 0. Example: if Mailer.MessageCount = 0 then Response.Write "There are no messages on the server." end if
MessageID	The MessageID property returns the MessageID header for the Retrieved message.
MessageInfo	The MessageInfo property returns the header data that is received from a call to GetPopHeaders. After a call to GetPopHeaders, and if there are messages on the server, this property is a variant array of variant arrays that contains information about the messages on the server. Values returned are: intMessageID, strSubject, strDate, strFrom, strSender ,strTo, strReplyTo, intSize, strStatus.
Password	Password is the password of the account on the POP3 server that you will be retrieving messages for. This is used along with UserName to log into the POP server.
Pop3Log	You can debug a POP3 session by assigning a path and filename to the POP3Log property. The complete POP3 session will be written to this file. Be sure the logged in user under IIS has permission to write to this file. Do NOT use this in a multi-user environment. This is only for debugging.
Priority	Gets the message priority. Priorities are 1-5 and are reflected in the X-Priority header. Valid values: 1 – High 3 – Normal 5 – Low Example: if Mailer.Priority = 1 then Response.Write "This message is high priority" end if
Recipients	The Recipients property contains any To: addresses the message was sent to.
RemoteHost	RemoteHost property should be set to the host name or IP address of the POP3 server you will be pulling messages from.
ReturnReceipt	The ReturnReceipt flag. Example: If Mailer.ReturnReceipt then rem User expected return receipt on this message end if
Subject	The Subject property returns the Subject of the message that you have retrieved.
TimeOut	Sets the maximum time to wait for a response from the POP3 server.
UserName	UserName is the user name of the account on the POP3 server that you will be retrieving messages for. This is used along with Password to log into the POP server.
Version	Returns the version of the Pop3 component.

Method	Parameters	Return Value	Description
ClosePop3	None	N/A	Quits the current POP3 session and closes the connection.
Delete	Integer value indicating which message on the server to delete.	True/False	Permanently deletes the specified message from the server.
EraseFile	String value indicating full path to file you want to erase.	True/False	Permanently deletes a file from the local drive. This is used to clean up messages that are written to disk using the RetrieveToFile method.
GetAttachmentInfo	Integer value indicating which message attachment you want to get the properties for.	N/A	GetAttachment Info will get the properties for the specified attachment and fill in the AttContentType, AttFileName and AttFileSize properties.
GetHeaderField	String value indicating which header field you want to return	String value with header field info.	GetHeaderField is provided so that you can query the current message for any specific header field information that isn't provided through AspPOP3 properties.
GetPopHeader	Integer value indicating the message number to retrieve the header for.	True or False	GetPopHeader allows you to retrieve the header information for one message instead of all messages. See GetPopHeaders to retrieve all message headers.
GetPopHeaders	None	True or False	GetPopHeaders provides a simple interface to retrieving information about each message on the server. This makes it easy to present a list of message info. The examples provided with AspPOP3, WebMail and WebMail2 provide good examples of how to use this method.
OpenPop3	None	True or False	The OpenPop3 method opens the connection to the POP3 RemoteHost using the UserName and Password properties.
Retrieve	Integer value indicating which message to retrieve from the POP3 server.	True or False	The Retrieve method will retrieve the entire message from the POP3 server including any attachments. Once you have used Retrieve to get a valid message the AspPOP3 properties are filled in with the appropriate values and any attachments are available using the attachment methods/properties.
RetrieveToFile	Integer value indicating which message and a string value indicating the filename to save to.	True or False	RetrieveToFile simply pulls the message without processing anything. The entire message including any attachments is saved to the file.
RetrieveToMemory	Integer value indicating which message to retrive	strMsg - the unprocessed message in string format	Retrieves the specified message and returns the message in an unprocessed form.
SaveAttachment	intAttachment Integer value indicating which attachment to save.	True or False	SaveAttachment will save an attachment to the MailDirectory's path. SaveAttachment will attempt to determine the proper file name before saving.
SaveAttachmentToFile	intAttachment, strFileName Integer value indicating which attachment to save and a pathless filename to save the attachment into.	True or False	SaveAttachment will save an attachment to the MailDirectory's path. SaveAttachmentToFile uses strFileName as the filename to save the message to.