Joining message/partial emails

With Mail.dll you can join a message split across multiple message/partial emails.

“Message/partial” emails allow large objects to be delivered as several mail messages and automatically joined by the receiving client. This mechanism can be used when intermediate transport agents, such as SMTP servers, are limiting the size of individual mails that can be sent. Content-Type “message/partial” indicates that the body contains a fragment of a larger email.

// C#

IMail part1 = ...
IMail part2 = ...

PartialMailJoiner joiner = new PartialMailJoiner();
joiner.Add(part1);
joiner.Add(part2);

IMail email = joiner.Join();
var attachments = email.Attachments;
' VB.NET

Dim part1 As IMail = "..."
Dim part2 As IMail = "..."

Dim joiner As New PartialMailJoiner()
joiner.Add(part1)
joiner.Add(part2)

Dim email As IMail = joiner.Join()
Dim attachments = email.Attachments

PartialMailJoiner.Add method checks if all parts of message/partial email are present and you can use PartialMailJoiner.Join method:

// C#

IMail part1 = ...
IMail part2 = ...

List<IMail> parts = new List<IMail>{part1, part2};

PartialMailJoiner joiner = new PartialMailJoiner();

foreach (IMail part in parts)
{
    if (part.IsPartial)
    {
        bool allPartsPresent = joiner.Add(part);

        if (allPartsPresent)
        {
            IMail email = joiner.Join();
            var attachments = email.Attachments;
        }
    }
}

' VB.NET

Dim part1 As IMail = ...
Dim part2 As IMail = ...

Dim parts As New List(Of IMail)() From { _
	part1, _
	part2 _
}

Dim joiner As New PartialMailJoiner()

For Each part As IMail In parts
    If part.IsPartial Then
        Dim allPartsPresent As Boolean = joiner.Add(part)

	If allPartsPresent Then
            Dim email As IMail = joiner.Join()
	    Dim attachments = email.Attachments
        End If
    End If
Next

Joining fragmented message is a bit tricky. Messages filtered using Content-Type’s id property and then sorted by Content-Type’s number property. Note that part numbering begins with 1, not 0.

The headers of the encapsulated message must be merged with the headers of the enclosing entities. Following rules must be used:

  • All of the header fields from the initial enclosing message, except those that start with “Content-” and the specific header fields” “Subject”, “Message-ID”, “Encrypted”, and “MIME-Version”, must be copied, in order, to the new message.
  • The header fields in the enclosed message which start with “Content-“, plus the “Subject”, “Message-ID”, “Encrypted”, and “MIME-Version” fields, must be appended, in order, to the header fields of the new message. all others will be ignored and dropped.
  • All of the header fields from the second and any subsequent enclosing messages are ignored.

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