Being able to send an email that will land in the recipient’s inbox and not the spam folder, it’s critical for any application, and by using the Nylas APIs we can ensure that will happen. The emails will look the same as any other sent an email from the sender’s account, but we will have API-level control over the creation and sending of the message.
To make things even easier for Java developers, we offer the Nylas Java SDK. Today we’re going to review how to send emails and attachments with Java using the SDK.
BTW, you can check these other posts if you’re more into Ruby, Node or Python. And if you want to use raw APIs, we have you covered as well. Low code? Using Node-Red?, no problem either.
Chances are that we already have Java installed on our machines. We can check our version by doing the following:
$ java --version Java 18.0.2 2002-07-19 Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 18.0.2+9-61) Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 18.0.2+9-61, mixed mode, sharing)
If we don’t happen to have Java installed, we download it from here depending on our operating system.
Our project is going to be compiled using Maven, so if we don’t have it installed on our system, we do so by using Homebrew.
$ brew install maven
While we can use any IDE of our choice, having one that is dedicated to Java is usually a better option. IntelliJ offers a nice community edition that will serve our needs.
Once IntelliJ is installed, we can proceed to create our project.
Our new project is going to be called Nylas_Email_Send and it’s going to be built using Maven. The GroupId will be Nylas.
When we hit create, we’re going to be presented with the pom.xml file first. We’re going to update this file to include what we need for this project.
Here’s the content of the pom.xml file
Email API
Calendar API
Scheduler
Contacts API
ExtractAI
Google email & calendar integration
Outlook email & calendar integration
IMAP integration
Calendar management
Embedded contextual email
Scheduling automation
Automated outreach
Intelligent data extraction
Ecommerce
Telehealth
Real estate
Financial technology
Educational technology
Expense management
Customer relationship management
Applicant tracking system
Communications platform
Marketplaces
Document management
Docs
SDKs
Tutorials
API status
Changelog
Support
Blog
Events
Guides
Inspiration gallery
Partners
Build vs. buy
Customer stories
Security & Compliance
Why Nylas
Newsroom<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>Nylas</groupId>
<artifactId>Nylas_Email_Send</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<properties>
<maven.compiler.source>18</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>18</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>
</project>
And here it is how it should be:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>Nylas</groupId>
<artifactId>Nylas_Email_Send</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.nylas.sdk</groupId>
<artifactId>nylas-java-sdk</artifactId>
<version>1.15.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-jdk14</artifactId>
<version>1.7.25</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>io.github.cdimascio</groupId>
<artifactId>dotenv-java</artifactId>
<version>2.2.4</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<pluginManagement>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<!-- Build an executable JAR -->
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1.0</version>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
<mainClass>Nylas.SendEmail</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>Nylas.SendEmail</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</pluginManagement>
</build>
</project>
Looks like we added a lot of things, so let’s review them quickly.
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.nylas.sdk</groupId>
<artifactId>nylas-java-sdk</artifactId>
<version>1.15.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-jdk14</artifactId>
<version>1.7.25</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>io.github.cdimascio</groupId>
<artifactId>dotenv-java</artifactId>
<version>2.2.4</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
Here we are adding the dependencies for the Nylas Java SDK, for slf4j Logger and for DotEnv which will allow us to read .env files.
<build>
<pluginManagement>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<!-- Build an executable JAR -->
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
<version>3.1.0</version>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<addClasspath>true</addClasspath>
<mainClass>SendEmail</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
</configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
<artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<archive>
<manifest>
<mainClass>SendEmail</mainClass>
</manifest>
</archive>
<descriptorRefs>
<descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
</descriptorRefs>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</pluginManagement>
</build>
This adds maven-jar-plugin and maven-assembly-plugin which will help us to generate the JAR file and also to embed all the dependencies on the JAR file.
Now we can go ahead and create the class of our project, which will be called SendEmail.
Once the file is created, we can add the following code:
//Import Java Utilities
import java.lang.Exception;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.io.IOException;
//Import Nylas Packages
import com.nylas.NylasAccount;
import com.nylas.NylasClient;
import com.nylas.RequestFailedException;
import com.nylas.Draft;
import com.nylas.NameEmail;
//Import DotEnv to handle .env files
import io.github.cdimascio.dotenv.Dotenv;
import io.github.cdimascio.dotenv.DotenvException;
public class SendEmail {
public static void main(String[] args) throws RequestFailedException,
IOException{
Dotenv dotenv = Dotenv.load();
// Create the client object
NylasClient client = new NylasClient();
// Connect it to Nylas using the Access Token from the .env file
NylasAccount account = client.account(dotenv.get("ACCESS_TOKEN"));
//Create a new draft
Draft draft = new Draft();
//Set the subject of the message
draft.setSubject("With Love, from Nylas");
draft.setBody("This email was sent using the Nylas Java Email API.
Visit https://www.nylas.com for details.");
draft.setTo(Arrays.asList(new NameEmail("Blag",
"[email protected]")));
try {
//Send the email draft
account.drafts().send(draft);
//Print a friendly message
System.out.println( "The Email was sent successfully" );
} catch (Exception e) {
//Something went wrong, display the error
System.out.print(e.getMessage());
}
}
}
In order for this to work, we need to create first an .env file and then a log4j file.
In our root folder, we need to create a new file and call it .env
And then type the following:
ACCESS_TOKEN=YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN
We need to replace YOUR_ACCESS_TOKEN with our Nylas Token
Let’s go to the Nylas Dashboard (creating a new account if necessary) and get our CLIENT_ID, CLIENT_SECRET, and ACCESS_TOKEN.
If we go to App Settings on the left-side menu, we will find a “Developer Details” section. The CLIENT_ID and CLIENT_SECRET, our Nylas account credentials, are there.
For the connected user account’s ACCESS_TOKEN, we can go to Accounts in the left-side menu, select our account, and then press “Generate New Token”. This will generate a new token for the connected account, allowing us to take actions on the user’s behalf via API.
The Nylas Java SDK uses a logger to log information regarding warning or error messages. If we don’t set this, we will receive a warning message every time we run our code.
Simply, go to the resources folder, and choose New and Resource Bundle.
Name this new file log4j and press Ok.
The file will be created properly.
Now we should be ready to compile everything and generate our JAR file.
At this point, we’re ready to send our email. We just need to select our SendEmail class and press Run ‘SendEmail.main()’.
The output should look like this indicating that our email was sent successfully.
As we’re using Maven, we want Maven to build our project and we need to tell IntelliJ about this.
We need to go to IntelliJ IDEA → Preferences
We need to go to Build, Execution, Deployment → Build Tools → Maven → Runner.
And simply tick Delegate IDE build/run actions to Maven.
With that done, we can continue.
On the root folder, we need to press Control + Click or Right-Click depending on our operating system and choose Build Module.
Everything should look good from the output window
Now, in order to create the JAR file, we need to execute a Maven command, so we need to go to the upper right corner and select Run Anything.
We need to type the following on the Debug window:
mvn clean compile assembly:single
This will create a new folder called Target that will contain our JAR file.
If we go to the terminal we can run our JAR file and send an email.
We need to type the following:
$ java -jar target/Nylas_Email_Send-1.0-SNAPSHOT-jar-with-dependencies.jar
We can verify that the email was sent by going to our inbox.
You see how easy it is to send emails with Java and the Nylas Java SDK!
We received a comment in one of our YouTube videos on creating a complaint form that will take the feedback and send it as an email. Of course, we needed to do something to address this comment. So here we go; we’ll learn how to send emails using Java via a web form.
Choosing a web framework can be a daunting task, there are so many options and so many pros and cons, so let’s make things easy for everybody and choose a Micro Framework like Spark which is super friendly and Sinatra-like.
We already know how to create a project, so let’s move on to the interesting part, which will be adding our dependencies on the pom.xml file
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>friendly-letter</groupId>
<artifactId>friendly-letter</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<maven.compiler.source>17</maven.compiler.source>
<maven.compiler.target>17</maven.compiler.target>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
<artifactId>slf4j-simple</artifactId>
<version>1.7.25</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.sparkjava</groupId>
<artifactId>spark-core</artifactId>
<version>2.9.4</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.nylas.sdk</groupId>
<artifactId>nylas-java-sdk</artifactId>
<version>1.15.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>io.github.cdimascio</groupId>
<artifactId>dotenv-java</artifactId>
<version>2.2.4</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>
So far, it looks almost like the first section, although shorter, as we’re going to generate a JAR file at all, and we’re just adding what we need to be able to call Spark.
We’re going to create a class named Main and type the following:
//Import Java Utilities
import java.lang.Exception;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.io.IOException;
//Import Nylas Packages
import com.nylas.NylasAccount;
import com.nylas.NylasClient;
import com.nylas.RequestFailedException;
import com.nylas.Draft;
import com.nylas.NameEmail;
//Import DotEnv to handle .env files
import io.github.cdimascio.dotenv.Dotenv;
import io.github.cdimascio.dotenv.DotenvException;
//Import to handle the SparkJava Web Framework
import static spark.Spark.*;
public class Main {
static String SendEmail(String name, String email, String comments){
Dotenv dotenv = Dotenv.load();
// Create the client object
NylasClient client = new NylasClient();
// Connect it to Nylas using the Access Token from the .env file
NylasAccount account = client.account(dotenv.get("ACCESS_TOKEN"));
//Create a new draft
Draft draft = new Draft();
//Set the subject of the message
draft.setSubject("Complaint from " + name + " - " + email);
draft.setBody(comments);
draft.setTo(Arrays.asList(new NameEmail("Blag",
"[email protected]")));
try {
//Send the email draft
account.drafts().send(draft);
//Print a friendly message
return ("<!DOCTYPE html>" +
"<html><head>" +
"<meta http-equiv=\"refresh\" content=\"5;
URL=/feedback\">" +
"<script src=\"https://cdn.tailwindcss.com\"></script>" +
"</head>" +
"<body>" +
"<div class=\"bg-neutral-200 border-neutral-600 border-b
p-4 m-4 rounded\">" +
"<h2 class=\"font-semibold\">Thanks! We received your
feedback.</h1>" +
"<br><p class=\"font-semibold\">You will be automatically
redirected." +
"</div>" +
"</body>" +
"<html>");
} catch (Exception e) {
//Something went wrong, display the error
return (e.getMessage());
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws RequestFailedException,
IOException{
get("/feedback", (request, response) ->
"<!DOCTYPE html>" +
"<html>" +
"<head>" +
"<title>Complaint Form</title>" +
"<script src=\"https://cdn.tailwindcss.com\">
</script>" +
"</head>" +
"<body>" +
"<div class=\"bg-neutral-200 border-neutral-600
border-b p-4 m-4 rounded\">" +
"<h1 class=\"font-black\">If you're not happy
with the provided service, " +
"please let us know</h1>" +
"<br>" +
"<form method=\"post\">" +
"<label for=\"name\"
class=\"font-bold\">Name </label>" +
"<input type=\"text\" name=\"name\"
placeholder=\"Your name\"></input>" +
"<br><br>" +
"<label for=\"email\"
class=\"font-bold\">Email </label>" +
"<input type=\"text\" name=\"email\"
placeholder=\"Your email\"></input>" +
"<br><br>" +
"<p class=\"font-bold\">Comments</p>" +
"<textarea name=\"comments\"\n" +
" placeholder=\"Your comments\"\n" +
" rows=5\n" +
" cols=50></textarea>" +
"<br><br>" +
"<button type=\"submit\" class=\"bg-blue-500
hover:bg-blue-700 " +
"text-white font-bold py-2 px-4
rounded-full\">Submit</button>" +
"</form>" +
"</div>" +
"</body>" +
"</html>"
);
post("/feedback", (request, response) ->
SendEmail(request.queryParams("name"),
request.queryParams("email"),
request.queryParams("comments"))
);
}
}
Basically, what we are doing is defining a method called get(“/feedback”, (request, response) which will be called when we call our web server using /feedback.
This will present us with a form where we need to fill in our name, email and comments. When we press submit, we will call the form post(“/feedback”, (request, response) which will call the SendEmail method providing all the information that we filled in the form.
SendEmail will then send the email. Nice and simple.
Remember to enable Maven before even trying to run this project:
Build the module and then simply go to the class Main and run it.
If we head to our web browser and type:
localhost:4567/feedback
We will be presented with the following form:
And when we click on Submit.
Now, we can go into our mailbox and check that we received the email.
If you want the full source code, you can go to our Github repo java-email-send-form.
And that’s it! As you can see, learning how to send emails with Java using the Nylas Java SDK becomes an easy task. If you want to learn more, visit our Documentation Page.
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Blag aka Alvaro Tejada Galindo is a Senior Developer Advocate at Nylas. He loves learning about programming and sharing knowledge with the community. When he’s not coding, he’s spending time with his wife, daughter and son. He loves Punk Music and reading all sorts of books.