Question: empty smtp username and password behaviour

[VK-SMILECDR]

Hi @bbottema

Thanks for the excellent and simple to use library

Question

• Does SimpleJavaMail consider empty and not null smtp username and/or password as a requirement to authenticate mail client to mail server?
• Is this expected behaviour?

Example

Based on the code review, the following looks like current logic in SimpleJavaMail:

• when the username is null no authentication required.
• when the username is empty and not null ("") authentication required

[bbottema]

That's correct. If the user wouldn't want authentication, then username/password should be null, which seem the canonical principle to apply. I suppose it's technically possible to setup an authenticated SMTP server with empty values, which would be different from not having to authenticate at all. I could default empty username/password to mean the same as null-values, but I'm not sure that would make more sense.

Do you have reason to believe otherwise?

[bbottema]

Well that would be #331

[bbottema]

And so this change has been released in 6.7.4