Email Spec?

  • Thread starter Thread starter archway
  • Start date Start date
A

archway

Hi,

I have just starting development on a basic email client in .NET as a
learning exercise. I have managed to attach to my POP3 server and list, read
emails etc. However, I am not entirely sure of the format of the emails so
that I can write some code to manage them. Could someone point me in the
direction to learn more about this please? I am fairly new to this, so
something not too taxing initially would be great.

Many thanks in advance.
 
Thanks for the quick response. However, I was reading this and it referred
to RFC822 as being the standard for internet messages, but this is
apparently obsolete? Also, I could not find a reference to MIME anywhere,
which I thought had something to do with it?

Sorry if I am sounding stupid, but I have not got much experience in this,
hence the request for some resource on the internet to help me out. I have
been searching around on my own, but there seems to be conflicting
references, out of date information, which is all quite confusing. Is there
not a definitive site or something that will explain the internet email
format?

Thanks
 
archway said:
Thanks for the quick response. However, I was reading this and it referred
to RFC822 as being the standard for internet messages, but this is
apparently obsolete? Also, I could not find a reference to MIME anywhere,
which I thought had something to do with it?
Click to expand...

The current RFC applying to POP3 is 1939:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1939.html
While POP3 defines a method to get the messages off the server, you'll want to
extract the useful parts from them. This is where MIME comes in. There are a
number of RFCs that relate to MIME, links here:
http://www.mhonarc.org/~ehood/MIME/

The RFCs will tell you about the protocols, and the formats for parsing the
messages. The implementation details are up to you... :)
 
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