Search text in Emails

To search a keyword in emails search(String) method is used. This method returns the collection of SearchResult objects. For details, see Search Text.

Here are the steps to search a keyword in the email:

  • Instantiate Parser object for the initial email;
  • Call search(String) method and obtain the collection of SearchResult objects;
  • Iterate through the collection and get the position and text.
Warning
search(String) method returns null value if search isn’t supported for the email. For example, text extraction isn’t supported for Zip archive. Therefore, for Zip archive search(String) method returns null. For an empty email search(String) method returns an empty collection.

The following example shows how to find a keyword in the email:

// Create an instance of Parser class
try (Parser parser = new Parser(Constants.SampleMsg)) {
    // Search a keyword:
    Iterable<SearchResult> sr = parser.search("test");
    // Iterate over search results
    for (SearchResult s : sr) {
        // Print an index and found text:
        System.out.println(String.format("At %d: %s", s.getPosition(), s.getText()));
    }
}

search(String, SearchOptions) is used for the advanced search in emails - like search with regular expressions. SearchOptions parameter is used to customize a search.

Here are the steps to search with a regular expression in the email:

The following example shows how to search with a regular expression in the email:

// Create an instance of Parser class
try (Parser parser = new Parser(Constants.SampleMsg)) {
    // Search with a regular expression with case matching
    Iterable<SearchResult> sr = parser.search("\\\\sthe\\\\s", new SearchOptions(true, false, true));
    // Iterate over search results
    for (SearchResult s : sr) {
        // Print an index and found text:
        System.out.println(String.format("At %d: %s", s.getPosition(), s.getText()));
    }
}

More resources

GitHub examples

You may easily run the code above and see the feature in action in our GitHub examples:

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