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Introduction |
The objective of the Post Office Protocol Version 3 (POP3) suite of beans is to provide diverse applications with the ability to receive e-mails. These beans implement the POP3 protocol and are compliant with Standard for ARPA Internet Text Messages and Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One (Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies).
The POP3 clients interact with a POP3 server in order to retrieve mails from the server and permit viewers to view, delete and save these messages. The objective of the POP3 protocol is to provide a means through which small computers can be enabled to receive mails without having to have all the infrastructure required. It achieves this objective through the use of POP3 servers, which receive the mails sent to respective users, and make them available to the specified users after user validation through user ID and password.
The beans provide a flexible interface for applications which may want to implement a POP3 client while hiding the implementation details. The beans are capable of handling file attachments and can be configured to receive mail from servers outside the corporate firewall by configuring a socks server.
In order to provide the flexibility to developers who want to create their own user interfaces, the POP3 suite of beans internally comprises of three beans :
Features like responding to a mail is not implemented in the POP3 suite of beans. To implement such features, the application developer would require to merge the functionality of this bean with that provided by Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) bean or an SMTP application.
These beans may be used together or separately.
Though most beans can be part of both applications as well as applets, it should be noted that the POP3 suite of beans can work only as part of an application, and not in an applet due to security restrictions that apply to applets.
This document is intended to be used by application builders who would like to build Java applications which provide POP3 client functionality in their applications.
The application developer is expected to be familiar with the Java language and the JavaBeans architecture. The developer should be familiar with building applications by linking beans in an application builder tool. Familiarity with the functionality of POP3 would be advantageous, though not mandatory. No knowledge about the implementation of POP3 is required in order to use these beans.
Introduction : (this section) introduces you to the POP3 suite of beans. Provides information like the intended audience, guide organization and copyrights.
Installation : describes the hardware and software required for installing and using the POP3 suite of beans. It also describes how to install the beans and prepare them for use.
Description : describes the POP3 suite of beans in detail and provides information like the significant events, methods, customizers, etc.
Usage Scenarios : provides insights about how the POP3 suite of beans can be used in different configurations.
API Reference : describes the application programming interfaces for the POP3 suite of beans.
References : provides links to Internet sites which provide substantial reference documentation for the POP3 protocol, the MIME protocol, Java and JavaBeans.
Glossary : gives a brief explanation of some of the technical terms used in this guide.
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