sendmailR: Submit encoded message to local SMTP server - email

I need your help in order to send email message that includes text in Greek, from within R, using the function sendmail {sendmailR}.
I tried using the function iconv, like that but it didn't work
subject <- iconv("text in greek", to = "CP1253")
sendmail(from, to, subject, msg, control=list(smtpServer="blabla"))
The mail arrives immediately but the greek characters are unreadable. Any ideas?
EDIT
Another question that came up:
The second argument to accepts one recipient. What if want to send it to more than one? (I think 'll try sapply ing the sendmail function to a vector of recipients) - Ok, that worked. However, I'm not completely satisfied because each one of the recipients has no way to know who else has received the message.

Mail client won't be able to understand any encoding without Content-Type: charset=..., so you must add it:
msg<-iconv("text in greek", to = "utf8");
sendmail(from, to, subject, msg,
control=list(smtpServer="blabla"),
headers=list("Content-Type"="text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed")
);
that is for UTF8 (which I believe should be used), for CP1253:
msg<-iconv("text in greek", to = "CP1253");
sendmail(from, to, subject, msg,
control=list(smtpServer="blabla"),
headers=list("Content-Type"="text/plain; charset=CP1253; format=flowed")
);
multisend by hidden copies can also be done with header magick, still I think sapply loop is a better idea -- then the user will see that the mail was send directly to her/himself.

Related

Multiple To and Cc headers in MIME message sent through LotusScript

I'm building a LotusScript agent looping through a set of documents then - based on a given condition - create mail messages with formatted html text. The recipients will be mostly Non-Notes users (Outlook etc) that's why I want to make sure that subject and message body are formatted correctly. At least one copy is sent to a Domino mail-in database, though.
The code basically creates a MimeEntity, sets "To", "CC" and "Subject" headers then puts a pre-configured message into the mail body and sends it off.
In regards to the body I experimented both with a simple MimeEntity formatted as "text/html" as well as with a multipart message (Content-Type = "multipart/alternative") with 2 child entities (1: "text/plain" without any formatting, 2: "text/html" i.e. html-formatted); in my final code I plan to go for the latter method.
What is really weird is that the recipients (using Outlook as well as other mail clients like Thunderbird) see 3 "To:" and 3 "Cc:" items instead of just one. Looking at the doc in the receiving Domino mail-in database there is only one instance of each item (i.e. SendTo and CopyTo).
Here's the message's source code (taken from Thunderbird) showing those 3 instances of each item:
Return-Path: <sendername#myorg.de>
Received: (removed info here)
Subject: =?UTF-8?B?RWluIGdlbcO8dGxpY2hlcyBzaW1wbGVzIFRlc3RtYWlsIGF1cyBTT1A=?=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
To: user1#orgext1.de, user2#orgext2.de
CC: my-mail-in-db#myorg.de
To: user1#orgext1.de, user2#orgext2.de
CC: my-mail-in-db#myorg.de
To: user1#orgext1.de, user2#orgext2.de
CC: my-mail-in-db#myorg.de
Message-ID: <OFBCA50979.C1582837-ONC125856E.00548385-C125856E.0054838A#MYORG.DE>
From: Lothar Mueller <sendername#myorg.de>
This the basic code creating these mails (the simple non-multipart version):
Set docMemo = db.Createdocument()
Call docMemo.Replaceitemvalue("Form", "Memo")
Set nMimeBody = docMemo.Createmimeentity()
'SendTo
Set nMimeHead = nMimeBody.Createheader("To")
Call nMimeHead.Setheaderval("user1#otherorg.de,user2#3rdorg.de")
'CopyTo
Set nMimeHead = nMimeBody.Createheader("CC")
Call nMimeHead.Setheaderval("my-mail-in-db")
'Subject
Set nMimeHead = nMimeBody.Createheader("Subject")
Call nMimeHead.Addvaltext("Subject with ä-ö-ü-ß", "UTF-8")
'html version only for simple non-multipart MIME
Call nStream.Writetext({<p style="font-weight:bold;">Some simple formatted HTML content</p>})
Call nMimeBody.Setcontentfromtext(nStream, {text/html; charset="UTF-8"}, ENC_NONE)
Call nStream.Close()
'finally send
Call docMemo.Send(False)
Now, I can work around this behavior by simply setting the recipients as plain old Notes items, like:
Call docMemo.SendTo = recipientArray
Call docMemo.CopyTo = copyArray
instead of setting those values as MIME headers. In this case there are no more multiple instances of "To" and "CC" items at the recipients' mail clients.
I know that I did this already some years ago in a different project, and back then I didn't have those problems.
Anyone having an idea what could be the cause for this? Could it be due to the Domino version in use (now it's 10.0.1 FP4, back then it was some 9.0.1 version)?
Guess I found the cause for this, at least partially:
As I mentioned in an update to my post this behavior only can be observed when the agent is running in the client as opposed to running on the server:
examining the resulting mail through Ytria's scanEZ I find that there's a difference in regards to the fields that are created:
the run-on-server version just creates the expected fields "To:" and "Cc:" which turn up as "SendTo" and "CopyTo" in the resulting Notes document
If the code is running in the client some more fields are created in the Notes document: in addition to the standard fields there are also "INetSendTo", INetCopyTo, "AltSendTo" and "AltCopyTo". I assume that those extra fields are then rendered by the router to become addition "To:" and "Cc:" header items.
Thanks again to #DaveDelay for bringing up that idea regarding the router and mail.box

Forwarded email detection

Is there any way to detect (using RFC 2822 headers) that an email is a forwarded email?
There are two things that are normally referred to as "forwarding".
When you set up automatic account-level forwarding to another email address, your mail system will usually introduce an extra header to enable it to detect and break mail loops. Unfortunately, the name of this header has never been standardized. Some use Delivered-To, some use X-Loop, some use X-Original-To, some use an X-header proprietary to their mail software. But there's no single header field that's present all cases.
When you manually forward a message by clicking the "Forward" button in your mailer and entering a recipient email address and some descriptive text, a new message with a new Message-ID header is generated. The set of headers on this message will be indistinguishable from a normal reply -- In-Reply-To and References are set in exactly the same way. The only difference is that the Subject header will usually start with "Fwd:" or end with "(fwd)". ("Usually" because some clients format it as "[Fwd: <original subject>]" with square brackets around the new subject, some clients localize the prefix Fwd: into their own language, and some users manually edit the Subject before hitting "send".)
So there are good hints that a message is forwarded, but no hard and fast rules.
Reading the spec, CTRL+F for "forward" gives the following header fields:
resent-date = "Resent-Date:" date-time CRLF
resent-from = "Resent-From:" mailbox-list CRLF
resent-sender = "Resent-Sender:" mailbox CRLF
resent-to = "Resent-To:" address-list CRLF
resent-cc = "Resent-Cc:" address-list CRLF
resent-bcc = "Resent-Bcc:" (address-list / [CFWS]) CRLF
resent-msg-id = "Resent-Message-ID:" msg-id CRLF
I'm not sure whether the major mail software uses these though.
EDIT
Read the spec a little too quickly, there is also this note:
Note: Reintroducing a message into the transport system and using
resent fields is a different operation from "forwarding".
"Forwarding" has two meanings: One sense of forwarding is that a mail
reading program can be told by a user to forward a copy of a message
to another person, making the forwarded message the body of the new
message. A forwarded message in this sense does not appear to have
come from the original sender, but is an entirely new message from
the forwarder of the message. On the other hand, forwarding is also
used to mean when a mail transport program gets a message and
forwards it on to a different destination for final delivery. Resent
header fields are not intended for use with either type of
forwarding.
There are no other notices of "forwarding", so there are no header fields that you can use to detect the forward, except for the subject = "Fwd: <msg>" convention.

parsing email message

Just want a basic understand of what parts a email message may have.
I know there is a messageId, date, subject, from, cc, bcc, body, etc.
Specifically I want to know how attachments and images may be embedded in the email.
At this point I think there are 2, please correct me if I am wrong.
attachments
embedded attachments/images
is that correct?
The official answer for this question is contained in RFC5322 and some related RFC's. The Wikipedia entry for email does a pretty good job of referencing the RFC numbers. To get started with MIME see RFC2045.
Attachments are encoded as multipart similar to multipart file uploads. Basically the message has a header saying there is an attachment and sets a boundary ( random string of characters to announce the start of the attachment) The boundary says when the data of the attachment starts. I think the filename is set on the boundary as well (if i remember correctly). I am doing a bit of hand waving, but this is the basic idea.
so you get somthing like
To: ...
From: ...
Content-Type: Multpart...
Content-Boundry: ewafoiuasfjasdfoashiafhj
message here
--------- Content-boundry: ewafoiuasfjasdfoashiafhj
attachement here

Using the Microsoft SMTP Server's Dropfolder

I have set up Microsoft SMTP server so it will store all incoming email in a dropfolder.
I want to process, using c#, incoming mail based on the sender, recipient, and subject line. If possible, I also want to create a plain text preview of the email.
So, there are two parts to this problem.
I'm guessing a FileSystemWatcher
would be adequate for providing
notification of incoming mail.
How to parse the headers and body text from the .eml file; is there an existing library or any good documentation on the format?
Thanks for any help.
Yes - thats true
I used this: http://www.lumisoft.ee/lswww/ENG/Products/Mail_Server/mail_index_eng.aspx?type=info
It's a Mailserver written in C# with an API you can use without using the Mailserver
EDIT: Found a code snippet:
LumiSoft.Net.Mime.Mime m = LumiSoft.Net.Mime.Mime.Parse(mailfile);
Console.WriteLine("Read message from: " + m.MainEntity.From);
Console.WriteLine("To: " + m.MainEntity.To[0]);

CDO message: text attachment gets corrupted

I'm creating an email message using CDO object (and VB6, but that doesn't really matter).
With New CDO.Message
.To = "<address>"
.Subject = "Manifest test 8"
.Organization = "<company>"
.From = "<address>"
.Sender = .From
With .Configuration
.Fields(cdoSendUsingMethod).Value = cdoSendUsingPort
.Fields(cdoSMTPServer).Value = "192.168.0.4"
.Fields.Update
End With
With .AddAttachment("c:\import\customermanifestOURACCOUNT11122008110032.dat")
.Fields(cdoContentDisposition).Value = "attachment; filename=""Consignor.dat"""
.Fields.Update
End With
.Send
End With
As you can see, the message is empty and contains an attachment that I rename in the email.
The attachment is an ASCII text file, fixed-width, that contains some output from our systems, one record per line, separated with CRLF.
When the message gets sent, all CRs get stripped out the attachment, so the receiver gets a file that only has LFs and therefore is corrupted.
I tried to change ContentEncoding to 7bit and base64, didn't work.
I tried to set ContentMediaType for the attachment to text/plain, didn't work.
I tried to not rename the attachment after adding, didn't work.
The ContentMediaType for the attachment is set to application/octet-stream by default, so I can't figure out why (and by what) it gets changed in the first place.
If I execute .SaveToFile() on the attachment right after .Send(), it saves valid file on the disk.
Is this a problem in my code, or is it a mail server setting or something?
Ok, that was weird.
We used our gmail accounts to test that thing, more specifically, gmail web interface. We clicked attachments links to save reveived files. And the files were corrupted.
As soon as we instead tried some thick clients, it turned out to be fine. All files get download properly without any corruptions.
So I assume this is a bug in gmail web interface (as opposed to gmail POP3 interface).
I have not used CDO in a long time, but i remember having this issue in the past. By trying different things, we figured that if there was any content in the body of the message the attachments were sent properly.
Weird, i know.
try it and let us know.
I just got this same trouble. I switched to Jmail and my CSV (text file) was now exactly like the original when I read it from gmail.
I compared the original message (in Gmail, option - view original message) and discovered that with CDO.Message, the attachment is not encoded really well, it is kept in text format, and the mail client do what he wants with it. With Jmail, the message is encoded in Base64 so it is kept in its original state from the start to the end. So, be careful when using CDO.Message with text file attachments! Try using Jmail (free) instead.
CDO.message: Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Jmail.message: Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64