apache mime4j maven dependency for 0.7.2

Question

Trying to use the Apache Mime4J dependency for Version 0.7.2 like this:

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>org.apache.james</id>
    <url>http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.james</groupId>
  <artifactId>apache-mime4j</artifactId>
  <version>0.7.2</version>
</dependency>

I got an error message that the dependency could not be downloaded. After checking that http://uk.maven.org/maven2/org/apache/james/apache-mime4j/0.7.2/apache-mime4j-0.7.2.jar indeed does not exist but http://uk.maven.org/maven2/org/apache/james/apache-mime4j/0.7.2/ had .bin.tar.gz files I worked around the problem using:

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.apache.james</groupId>
   <artifactId>apache-mime4j</artifactId>
   <version>0.6.1</version>
</dependency>

This will therefore not reference the more current 0.7.2 release.

This is my "set of questions":

• Why does the 0.7.2 release not contain a Jar file?
• How should I reference the dependency to get the latest Jar?
• Do I need it anyway?
• What differences are there between the 0.7.2 and the 0.6.1 release?

Answer 1

Question 1: Why an artifact might not exist

According to the changelog there has been some refactoring going on to split the functionality into the three parts: core,dom and storage.

Question 2: How to get the latest artifact

modify the dependencies to:

 <dependency>
   <groupId>org.apache.james</groupId>
   <artifactId>apache-mime4j-core</artifactId>
   <version>0.7.2</version>
 </dependency>
 <dependency>
   <groupId>org.apache.james</groupId>
   <artifactId>apache-mime4j-dom</artifactId>
   <version>0.7.2</version>
 </dependency>
    <dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.james</groupId>
    <artifactId>apache-mime4j-storage</artifactId>
    <version>0.7.2</version>
  </dependency>

Question 3: Do I need it?

if you'd like to use the improved DOM API: yes. You will need to modify your import statements and can not use new Message() any more. Use

MessageServiceFactory.newInstance().newMessageBuilder().newMessage();

instead. The multipart.getBodyParts() function has also changed and returns an Entity now. There is no isMimeType() for the Entity. You might want to use getMimeType() instead.

Question 4: What changed between versions?

See the change log between 0.7.2 and 0.6.1.