Using a system tray application to check , send and configure emails

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Introduction

This article aims at demonstrating creation of a system tray application , which uses a context menu. This article also explains creation of processes and handling XML Data (reading and writing ).

Why Desktop Mail Checker ?

Let me confess some thing guys !!! I have a trash of mails jumping in to me almost all of the 24 hours. I act a little bit frenzied about checking mails. I check my mails and recheck and I keep doing that over and over. I felt keeping my mail client opened was annoying and I wanted to do something to overcome this.

I wanted to write an application that sits over your system tray and convenient enough to check mails easily without hassles. Another thing was , I wanted to write an system tray application , and wanted to create process at run time, and Viola !! I posted this article.

The application has two classes - the DesktopMailChecker and mailDomain classes.

The DesktopMailChecker class has a notifyicon control . Icons in the status area are short cuts to processes that are running in the background of a computer, such as a virus protection program or a volume control. These processes do not come with their own user interfaces. NotifyIcon provides a way to program in this functionality. Icon defines the icon that appears in the status area. Pop-up menus for an icon are addressed with ContextMenu and context menu control . The ContextMenu class represents shortcut menus that can be displayed when the user clicks the right mouse button over a control or area of the form.

This class also initiates the creation of a process using the Process class.

The MailDomain class has checkbox controls to receive the user options and the results are updated in an XML File. XMLTextReader and XMLTextWriter are used to read and write XML data in the application.

Things to remember before creating a system tray application.....

• Include a NotifyIcon class into the project.
• Use a ContextMenu class to provide a menu to the NotifyIcon class
• Create a icon or use an icon to the NotifyIcon.Icon

The code and illustrations are given below.

The DesktopMailChecker class contains code to create process.

private void menuItem4_Click(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
    MessageBox.Show("Checking Mails","Message");

         // Create a Process Object    
    Process myProcess = new Process();
    
         // Get the process start information of outlook
    ProcessStartInfo  myProcessStartInfo = 
           new ProcessStartInfo("outlook.exe");
    
    // Assign 'StartInfo' of outlook to 'StartInfo' of 'myProcess' object.
    myProcess.StartInfo = myProcessStartInfo;

    // Create a outlook
    myProcess.Start();
    createProc();
}

This is another method that creates web browsers in case you wanna check mails through your browser interface..

        // This is another procedure that creates an browser process
                
private void createIEProc(String site)
{
    Process myProcess = new Process();

    // Get the process start information of iexplore
    ProcessStartInfo  myProcessStartInfo = 
         new ProcessStartInfo("iexplore.exe",site);

    // Assign 'StartInfo' of outlook to 'StartInfo' of 'myProcess' object.
    myProcess.StartInfo = myProcessStartInfo;

    // Create a outlook
    myProcess.Start();
}

The Methods in the MailDomain class stores the user response , options of the mail provider sites to open.  Here is a sample code illustrating reading and writing XML Data into a file and from a file. This how xml files are read.

private void MailDomain_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
XmlTextReader reader = new XmlTextReader ("maillist.xml");
String list ="";
if(!reader.EOF)
{
while (reader.Read())
{
    switch (reader.NodeType)
    {
    case XmlNodeType.Element: // The node is an Element
        while (reader.MoveToNextAttribute()) // Read attributes
        {
            MessageBox.Show(reader.Value);
            list=reader.Value+","+list;
        }
        break;
    case XmlNodeType.DocumentType: // The node is a DocumentType
        break;
    default:
        break;
    }
}
    .......
reader.Close();
}
else
{
// Do Something else
}
}

This piece of code demonstrates writing into XML Files.

private void updateXMLdoc()
{
String []tok;
            
tok = textBox1.Text.Split(',');
            
            
if(textBox1.Text!="")
{
    XmlTextWriter xtw= new XmlTextWriter ("maillist.xml", null);
    xtw.Formatting = Formatting.Indented;
    xtw.WriteStartDocument(false);
    xtw.WriteDocType("maildomain", null, null, null);
    xtw.WriteComment("This file represents the mail sites the user uses");
    xtw.WriteStartElement("Data");
    
    for(int i=0;i<tok.Length;i++)
    {
        xtw.WriteStartElement("site", tok[i]);
        xtw.WriteEndElement();
    }
    xtw.WriteEndElement();
            
    //Write the XML to file and close the xtw
    xtw.Flush();
    xtw.Close();
}
}

Update

I added faculties to send emails using outlook from the present version. It uses the outlook client and it requires to interop the outlook dll. Use tlbimp.exe to convert the msoutl9.olb and covert into a .dll. Include the reference in to the project. The following code performs sending e mails via Outlook.

try
{
//Return a reference to the MAPI layer
oApp = new Outlook.Application();
oNameSpace= oApp.GetNamespace("MAPI");
// Logs on the user

oNameSpace.Logon(null,null,true,true);
//gets defaultfolder for my Outlook Outbox
oOutboxFolder = oNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(
    Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderOutbox);
Outlook._MailItem oMailItem = (Outlook._MailItem)oApp.CreateItem(
    Outlook.OlItemType.olMailItem);      
         
oMailItem.To = textBox1.Text;
oMailItem.Subject = textBox2.Text;
oMailItem.Body = textBox3.Text;

oMailItem.SaveSentMessageFolder = oOutboxFolder;
         
//The draft is saved
oMailItem.Save();

//adds it to the outbox
oMailItem.Send();
            
if(oMailItem.Sent || oOutboxFolder.UnReadItemCount!=0)
oOutboxFolder.MoveTo(oNameSpace.GetDefaultFolder(
    Outlook.OlDefaultFolders.olFolderSentMail));
this.Close();
//this.Refresh();
}
catch
{
this.Dispose();
}

Conclusion

This article explains the creation of process, use processinfo and create process specified by name or sysID.  This article demonstrates the creation of a system tray application. This application also demonstrates the reading and writing of XML Data . This application demonstrates using MSOutlook to send mails.