Programming Internet Email by David Wood

Anyone wishing to understand the way email is passed around the Internet will be interested in the first two chapters, which explain email at a high level. Following this introduction, the book is divided into five parts:

Chapters Chapter 1 through Chapter 8 cover email formats, from basic text messages to the guts of MIME. Secure email message formats (OpenPGP and S/MIME), mailbox formats, and other commonly used formats are detailed in this reference section of the book.

Chapters Chapter 9 through Chapter 12 describe Internet email protocols: SMTP and ESMTP, POP3, IMAP4, and ACAP. Each protocol is covered in detail to expose the Internet mail system’s inner workings.

Chapters Chapter 13 and Chapter 14 provide a solid API reference for programmers working in Perl and Java. Class references are given for commonly used Perl modules that relate to email and the Java Mail API.

Chapters Chapter 15 through Chapter 18 provide clear and concise examples of how to incorporate email capabilities into your applications. Examples are given in both Perl and Java.

Finally, we will look at the future of email on the Internet. Trends in email software and corporate uses of email are discussed.

The appendixes provide a host of explanatory information and useful references for the programmer and avid user alike, including a comprehensive list of Internet RFCs relating to email and MIME types and a list of email-related URLs.

If you have wanted to tame the Internet’s most popular messaging service, this book is for you. This book will serve as a guide and a reference to anyone programming Internet email applications.