[jira] Updated: (EMAIL-65) MIME layout generated by HtmlEmail causes trouble

["Martin Lau (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

     [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/EMAIL-65?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Martin Lau updated EMAIL-65:
----------------------------

    Attachment: CustomHtmlEmail.java

I'm pretty sure I'm jumping the gun here and I shouldn't be posting this here, but after a morning with Google searches I've been unable to find any real solution for the messed up mime types.

So, my afternoon has been spent writing something that at least fixes the issues I've been facing with the MIME types mentioned above. As far as I can tell, my abuse of the standard HtmlEmail class should work for variations of:

    text + html + attachment + inline [Example #3]
    text + html + attachment 
    text + html + inline
    text + html [Example #2]

I'm pretty sure I would've broken something else (time limitations mean I can't really give it a good going over - it works for my use cases), but this might help someone else who has the same problem...


> MIME layout generated by HtmlEmail causes trouble
> -------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: EMAIL-65
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/EMAIL-65
>             Project: Commons Email
>          Issue Type: Bug
>    Affects Versions: 1.0
>            Reporter: Morten Hattesen
>             Fix For: 2.0
>
>         Attachments: CustomHtmlEmail.java
>
>
> Previous bugs (e.g. http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/EMAIL-50 ) raised against commons-email version 1.0 have complained about Outlook not being able to properly display multipart emails generated by HtmlEmail. While this issue is resolved as of rev 510708, I believe there a several issues regarding MIME layout, that still cause trouble to email clients.
> In the current codebase, a multipart email containing: plaintext part, html part, inline images and attachments, is constructed (to the best of my knowledge) with a MIME layout like this:
> Generated by HtmlEmail. Contains parts: plaintext, html, embedded inline img, attach
> PART#, MIME_TYPE, (COMMENTS) 
> 1 multipart/related
> 1.1 multipart/alternative
> 1.1.1 text/plain (the plaintext content) 
> 1.1.2 text/html (the html content with cid: references to embedded images) 
> 1.2+ */* (attachment) 
> 1.3+ image/* (embedded image, referenced by 1.1.2) 
> ("+" above indicates that multiple (1..n) parts may be included)
> The above structure may cause email clients to display embedded images as attachments, even though they are semantically part of the text/html content.
> Furthermore, the current codebase (as documented in the HtmlEmail.setMsg() JavaDoc) synthesizes a html part by <pre>...</pre> wrapping the plaintext part, thus generating a bloated (double size) message, for no apparent reason. In my opinion, HtmlEmail should degrade to the mime layout of Email, if no html part is available.
> Proposed MIME layout
> ------------------------------
> To the best of my knowledge, a multipart email containing: plaintext part, html part, inline images and attachments, should be constructed like so:
> PART#, MIME_TYPE, (COMMENTS)
> 1. multipart/mixed
> 1.1 multipart/related
> 1.1.1 multipart/alternative
> 1.1.1.1 text/plain (the plaintext content)
> 1.1.1.2 text/html (the HTML content with cid: references to embedded images)
> 1.1.2+ image/* (embedded image, referenced by 1.1.1.2)
> 1.2+ */* (attachment)
> The following simplifications of the above structure may be applied:
> a. If no embedded images are included, items 1.1.2+ and 1.1 are removed.
> b. if no text/html part is included, items 1.1.1.2 and 1.1.1 are removed
> c. if no attachments are included, items 1.2+ and 1 are removed
> Incidentially, this MIME layout is used by GMail, which is an indication that it is the "proper" way.
> I seriously believe that this issue should be investigated and resolved, if at all possible, as part of version 1.1.
> I may be able to supply a patch to HtmlEmail.java in the April/May 2007 timeframe, but I am not prepared to put any body parts on the block on that one ;-)
> I welcome any comments!
> Morten Hattesen
> References:
> See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIME for additional information and references

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