Connecting to IMAPS MIcrosoft Exchange server fails with Cannot invoke "String.equals(Object)" because "this.status" is null

I've been trying and failling to connect to IMAPs server using Javamail. This is my example implementation:

public List<Mail> receive() throws MessagingException {
    IMAPStore emailStore = null;
    Folder emailFolder = null;

    // Initialize properties for the SMPT receiver
    Properties properties = new Properties();
    properties.setProperty("mail.imaps.ssl.enable", "true");
    properties.setProperty("mail.imaps.ssl.checkserveridentity", "false");
    properties.setProperty("mail.imaps.ssl.trust", "*");
    properties.put("mail.store.protocol", "imaps");
//        properties.put("mail." + protocol + ".host", host);
    properties.put("mail.imaps.host", host);
//        properties.put("mail." + protocol + ".port", port);
    properties.put("mail.imaps.port", port);



    //Get the SMTP session
    Session emailSession = Session.getInstance(properties);

    try {
        emailStore = (IMAPStore) emailSession.getStore();
        emailStore.connect(username, password);

        emailFolder = emailStore.getFolder("INBOX");
        emailFolder.open(Folder.READ_WRITE);

        return getNewMails(emailFolder);

    } catch (Exception e) {
        exception handling logic
    }

The code fails at connection.

This is the response of the server upon initial connection. * CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 AUTH=PLAIN SASL-IR UIDPLUS MOVE ID UNSELECT CHILDREN IDLE NAMESPACE LITERAL+

Javacode then recognizes that I'm not authenticated and proceeds to authenticate, after which I get following response

IMAPTaggedResponse 
  status = null
  tag = "+" 
  message = ""
  and 2 bytes in response

I'm completely unable to proceed. I tried removing the "s" in imaps from the configuration properties, but that yields even less progress because the server outright refuses to communicate.

The problem is that the code fails not within my implementation, but within javacode itself. This is the failing method:

**org.apache.geronimo.javamail .store.imap.connection.IMAPTaggedResponse#isBAD**

and the failing code is the following:

public boolean isBAD() {
    return this.status.equals("BAD");
}

and since the returning status from the IMAPTaggedResponse is null, it fails the equals method.

I do encode the credentials as Base64

any advice would be apretiated.

You need to authenticate when you're getting the session.

Example:

  Session emailSession = Session.getInstance(properties,
     new Authenticator() {
        protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
           return new PasswordAuthentication(
              "<username>", "<password>");
        }
     });

I figured it out. I used a dependency that itself imported these 2 things:

   <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.specs</groupId>
   <artifactId>geronimo-javamail_1.4_mail</artifactId>

   <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.javamail</groupId>
   <artifactId>geronimo-javamail_1.4_mail</artifactId>

That lead to a situation, where during runtime, incorrect library was used. When running mvn dependency:tree it became obvious which dependencies are responsible for this.

aftr that, it was a matter of removing them with

            <exclusion>
                <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.specs</groupId>
                <artifactId>geronimo-javamail_1.4_mail</artifactId>
            </exclusion>
            <exclusion>
                <groupId>org.apache.geronimo.javamail</groupId>
                <artifactId>geronimo-javamail_1.4_mail</artifactId>
            </exclusion>

Note, that I ended up not using base64 for credentials, i still use imaps instead of imap for properties (even tough most examples on stackoverflow and javadoc state imap) and I use full email as username.