Programmatically deleting outlook.com pop3 emails via LibCurl

Question

Hi there,

I am trying to delete emails via POP3 from an Outlook mailbox programmatically. I am using a C++ application with lib curl as the underlying , toolset.

Without going into huge detail, the segment of code is :

bool succeed(true);
	stringstream ustr;
	string res;
	ustr << m_MailPOP3Url << "/" << num;
	curl_easy_setopt(m_Curl, CURLOPT_URL, ustr.str().c_str());
	curl_easy_setopt(m_Curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "DELETE");

	/* Do not perform a transfer as DELE returns no data */
	curl_easy_setopt(m_Curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, 1L);
	curl_easy_setopt(m_Curl, CURLOPT_URL, ustr.str().c_str());

	/* Perform the custom request */
	res = curl_easy_perform(m_Curl);
	if (m_CurlResult != CURLE_OK)
	{
		cerr << "Unable to delete mail number : " << num << endl;
		succeed = false;
	}
	else
	{
		cout << "Deleted mail number : " << num << endl;

	}

The active command is the "DELETE". This works against a gmail mail box, but the call against an Outlook folder comes back with an OK, but the message is still there. My process runs in a loop, so it starts at the top again and sees everything in the mail list once again.

Thanks for anyone's suggestion.

Regards,

Stan

Answer 1

Hi,

To delete the email in outlook,

Use "DELE Num". E.g.

curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "DELE 1");

  curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST, "DELE 1");

        /* Do not perform a transfer as DELE returns no data */
        curl_easy_setopt(curl, CURLOPT_NOBODY, 1L);

        /* Perform the custom request */
        res = curl_easy_perform(curl);

Best regards,

Minxin Yu

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Answer 2

Thanks Minxin,

I had already tried this, and it did not work. Also, should the mail item number be at the end of the URL? For example if the mail item is 1, should the curl URL be:

pop3s://outlook.office365.com:995

or

pop3s://outlook.office365.com:995/1

I use the latter for gmail with "DELETE" and its fine. I have also checked that I have set the Outlook mailbox to allow the deletion of POP messages by clients.

Thanks,

Stan

Answer 3

Hi Minxin,

I located the problem. The code I had previous works if I remove one line from my initialisation:

curl_easy_setopt(curl,CURLOPTTIMEOUT,1000);

I have had this line in place for some time, so it's possibly something being added to the header incompatible with the DELE command. I tried several values for the timeout and it makes no difference. The behaviour on a Gmail mailbox is not sensitive to this, so it would seem to be some sort of defect on the cURL side(?).

Thanks for your help,

Regards,

Stan