Question

Is Javamail asynchronous or synchronous? That is, if I send off an email, do I continue processing immediately afterwards, or do I wait until it’s complete?

Furthermore, are there any ways that I could catch that an email failed to be delivered for any reason?

I’d also like to know these answers for Spring’s MailSender abstraction.

Thanks.

Answer 1

It is synchronous, since it transfers the message to the server and processes the server’s response before returning. The send docs explain in further detail. The message will throw a SendFailedException, or another MessagingException,
if the send fails immediately. But “success does not imply that the message was delivered to the ultimate recipient, as failures may occur in later stages of delivery.”