Develop Reference

java mailx multipart attachments from iphone missing

I use javax.mail to download mails from a given mail address in order to get the attachments (I expect images) and save the images on disk automatically (polling the mail address). This works fine except if the mail has been sent from an iPhone. It seems that in these cases the image is embedded in the mail (I can see the image in the web mail window) and cannot be downloaded as an attachment.
How can I extract the image from the mail?
What is the difference between iPhone mails and other mails regarding attachments?
Is the image a special part of the mail content?
In my program log I can see:
- contentType: multipart/mixed; boundary=Apple-Mail-...
- numberOfParts = 2
Java version is 1.7.0_21
javax.mail version is 1.4.7
This is the relevant code (most of it taken from http://www.codejava.net)
if (contentType.contains("multipart")) {
// content may contain attachments
Multipart multiPart = (Multipart) message.getContent();
numberOfParts = multiPart.getCount();
for (int partCount = 0; partCount < numberOfParts; partCount++) {
MimeBodyPart part = (MimeBodyPart) multiPart.getBodyPart(partCount);
if (Part.ATTACHMENT.equalsIgnoreCase(part.getDisposition())) {
// this part is the attachment
String fileName = part.getFileName();
attachFiles += fileName + ", ";
if (fileName.endsWith("jpg") || fileName.endsWith("JPG")
|| fileName.endsWith("jpeg") || fileName.endsWith("JPEG")) {
part.saveFile(saveDirectory + File.separator + fileName);
} else {
// attachment is not an image
}
} else {
// this part may be the message content
messageContent = part.getContent().toString();
}
}
if (attachFiles.length() > 1) {
attachFiles = attachFiles.substring(0, attachFiles.length() - 2);
}
} else if (contentType.contains("text/plain") || contentType.contains("text/html")) {
Object content = message.getContent();
if (content != null) {
messageContent = content.toString();
}
}

Below code can be checked:
Multipart mp = new MimeMultipart("related")
Use the default constructor,which resolves the issue.

The code you have is full of assumptions about the structure of a message. Most likely, one of those assumptions is wrong. Fire up a debugger, add some print statements, or do whatever is necessary to step through your code and compare what you're actually getting with what you expect to get. You can also dump the raw MIME content of the message using the Message.writeTo method, to see what the MIME structure of the message really is.
Probably the first thing to check is whether the image is marked as an ATTACHMENT. Perhaps it's being sent as INLINE instead?
BTW, you never want to use the filename in the message directly; someone could send you all sorts of malicious junk in there.

How to set HTTP header in Apache JClouds?

I'm using Apache JClouds to connect to my Openstack Swift installation. I managed to upload and download objects from Swift. However, I failed to see how to upload dynamic large object to Swift.
To upload dynamic large object, I need to upload all segments first, which I can do as usual. Then I need to upload a manifest object to combine them logically. The problem is to tell Swift this is a manifest object, I need to set a special header, which I don't know how to do that using JClouds api.
Here's a dynamic large object example from openstack official website.
The code I'm using:
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
BlobStore blobStore = ContextBuilder.newBuilder("swift").endpoint("http://localhost:8080/auth/v1.0")
.credentials("test:test", "test").buildView(BlobStoreContext.class).getBlobStore();
blobStore.createContainerInLocation(null, "container");
ByteSource segment1 = ByteSource.wrap("foo".getBytes(Charsets.UTF_8));
Blob seg1Blob = blobStore.blobBuilder("/foo/bar/1").payload(segment1).contentLength(segment1.size()).build();
System.out.println(blobStore.putBlob("container", seg1Blob));
ByteSource segment2 = ByteSource.wrap("bar".getBytes(Charsets.UTF_8));
Blob seg2Blob = blobStore.blobBuilder("/foo/bar/2").payload(segment2).contentLength(segment2.size()).build();
System.out.println(blobStore.putBlob("container", seg2Blob));
ByteSource manifest = ByteSource.wrap("".getBytes(Charsets.UTF_8));
// TODO: set manifest header here
Blob manifestBlob = blobStore.blobBuilder("/foo/bar").payload(manifest).contentLength(manifest.size()).build();
System.out.println(blobStore.putBlob("container", manifestBlob));
Blob dloBlob = blobStore.getBlob("container", "/foo/bar");
InputStream input = dloBlob.getPayload().openStream();
while (true) {
int i = input.read();
if (i < 0) {
break;
}
System.out.print((char) i); // should print "foobar"
}
}
The "TODO" part is my problem.
Edited:
I've been pointed out that Jclouds handles large file upload automatically, which is not so useful in our case. In fact, we do not know how large the file will be or when the next segment will arrive at the time we start to upload the first segment. Our api is designed to make client able to upload their files in chunks of their own chosen size and at their own chosen time, and when done, call a 'commit' to make these chunks as a file. So this makes us want to upload the manifest on our own here.

According to #Everett Toews's answer, I've got my code correctly running:
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
CommonSwiftClient swift = ContextBuilder.newBuilder("swift").endpoint("http://localhost:8080/auth/v1.0")
.credentials("test:test", "test").buildApi(CommonSwiftClient.class);
SwiftObject segment1 = swift.newSwiftObject();
segment1.getInfo().setName("foo/bar/1");
segment1.setPayload("foo");
swift.putObject("container", segment1);
SwiftObject segment2 = swift.newSwiftObject();
segment2.getInfo().setName("foo/bar/2");
segment2.setPayload("bar");
swift.putObject("container", segment2);
swift.putObjectManifest("container", "foo/bar2");
SwiftObject dlo = swift.getObject("container", "foo/bar", GetOptions.NONE);
InputStream input = dlo.getPayload().openStream();
while (true) {
int i = input.read();
if (i < 0) {
break;
}
System.out.print((char) i);
}
}

jclouds handles writing the manifest for you. Here are a couple of examples that might help you, UploadLargeObject and largeblob.MainApp.

Try using
Map<String, String> manifestMetadata = ImmutableMap.of(
"X-Object-Manifest", "<container>/<prefix>");
BlobBuilder.userMetadata(manifestMetadata)
If that doesn't work you might have to use the CommonSwiftClient like in CrossOriginResourceSharingContainer.java.

How to increase speed of getting datas from webserver for android app

I'm designing a android application that has client and server side. The main database is in server which every android device db is trying to look like. Whenever Android device is online, the app syncs with server database(the main database). Because I can change the datas with adding, deleting or updating in the database in server(Users can't change database in Android device, a.k.a Sqlite db). After synchronization, the Sqlite db will be added, deleted or updated.
There are a lot of images in server database, and I'm sending all of data as json type from PHP.
$datas = array('cats' => $cats, 'news' => $news, 'products' => $products);
$datas_json = (object) array('datas' => $datas);
$json = json_encode($datas_json);
echo $json;
And the app reads with BufferReader.
HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(response.getEntity().getContent()));
And afterwards, I'm trying to get all data is coming from server as string. There is a real problem about speed.
public String parseFromBuffer(BufferedReader rd) throws IOException
{
String line = "";
String full = "";
while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null)
{
full += line;
}
return full;
}
Because, If you think just one image may have 100.000 characters(in PHP side, I'm using base64 for images to send java and I'm decoding in java again.), imagine 1000 images! So, sometimes it takes 1-2 min to get 4-5 images with this way. After getting 'full' string(it could have 1.000.000 character!), I use jsonParser to get datas.
public jsonParser(String json_string) throws JSONException
{
json = new JSONObject(json_string);
}
...
public void parseJson() throws JSONException
{
JSONObject datas = json.getJSONObject("datas");
JSONArray cats = datas.getJSONArray("cats");
for(int i = 0; i < cats.length(); i++)
{
JSONObject c = cats.getJSONObject(i);
cat_id.add(c.getInt("cat_id"));
cat_name_tr.add(c.getString("cat_name_tr"));
cat_name_eng.add(c.getString("cat_name_eng"));
cat_upper_id.add(c.getInt("cat_upper_id"));
cat_order.add(c.getInt("cat_order"));
}
...
And finally, I insert, update or delete data which comes from jsonParser() to sqlite db.
In short, I have a problem or I need solution about speed of getting images across server-client and also in parseFromBuffer() method. You can suggest any advice, you can criticize of my way of doing this, may be I should serialize something, may be I should download all images in server to 'res' folder somehow...
Thanks in advance.

java getDisposition returns null on emails with attachments

SO i'm making a mail client for a homework assignment and one of the requirements is to handle incoming attachments. The first thing I want to do is just show if an email even has an attachment or not. I have a bunch of AWT lists that are side by side for From, Subject, Size, Date, Attachment.
For testing purposes, if the disposition returns null, i just put an x in the attachmentList. If its inline, it puts an i and for attachments it should show the filename. However, even on emails where there are attachments and looking at the headers in gmail webmail, which shows the content disposition as attachment (all lower case), the getDisposition of the email still returns null. I don't get why its not returning ATTACHMENT or attachment or something besides null. Here is the relevant code.
for (int i = 0; i < messages.length; i++) {
Address[] froms = messages[i].getFrom();
String email = froms == null ? null : ((InternetAddress) froms[0]).getAddress();
fromList.add(email);
subjectList.add(messages[i].getSubject());
sizeList.add("" + messages[i].getSize());
dateList.add(messages[i].getReceivedDate().toString());
String disposition = messages[i].getDisposition();
System.out.println("Disposition is " + disposition + ".");
if (disposition == null) {
attachmentList.add("x");
}
else if ("INLINE".equalsIgnoreCase(disposition)) {
attachmentList.add("i");
}
else if ("ATTACHMENT".equalsIgnoreCase(disposition)) {
String fileName = messages[i].getFileName();
if (fileName != null) {
attachmentList.add("attachment " + fileName);
}
}
}
You'll notice that it prints "the disposition is..." which is another testing code and it always prints either null or INLINE. The particular email i'm looking at is about 700k and contains 2 attachments.

Look at the raw MIME text of the message and make sure the Content-Disposition header is set as you expect.
Turn on JavaMail session debugging and examine the protocol trace in the debug output.
Are you using IMAP to read the message? If so, the IMAP server parses the message and returns the "disposition" information in the IMAP protocol message. The IMAP server may not be parsing the message correctly or may not be returning the disposition information correctly.

How to handle multipart/alternative mail with JavaMail?

I wrote an application which gets all emails from an inbox, filters the emails which contain a specific string and then puts those emails in an ArrayList.
After the emails are put in the List, I am doing some stuff with the subject and content of said emails. This works all fine for e-mails without an attachment. But when I started to use e-mails with attachments it all didn't work as expected anymore.
This is my code:
public void getInhoud(Message msg) throws IOException {
try {
cont = msg.getContent();
} catch (MessagingException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(ReadMailNew.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
}
if (cont instanceof String) {
String body = (String) cont;
} else if (cont instanceof Multipart) {
try {
Multipart mp = (Multipart) msg.getContent();
int mp_count = mp.getCount();
for (int b = 0; b < 1; b++) {
dumpPart(mp.getBodyPart(b));
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Exception arise at get Content");
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
public void dumpPart(Part p) throws Exception {
email = null;
String contentType = p.getContentType();
System.out.println("dumpPart" + contentType);
InputStream is = p.getInputStream();
if (!(is instanceof BufferedInputStream)) {
is = new BufferedInputStream(is);
}
int c;
final StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
while ((c = is.read()) != -1) {
sw.write(c);
}
if (!sw.toString().contains("<div>")) {
mpMessage = sw.toString();
getReferentie(mpMessage);
}
}
The content from the e-mail is stored in a String.
This code works all fine when I try to read mails without attachment. But if I use an e-mail with attachment the String also contains HTML code and even the attachment coding. Eventually I want to store the attachment and the content of an e-mail, but my first priority is to get just the text without any HTML or attachment coding.
Now I tried an different approach to handle the different parts:
public void getInhoud(Message msg) throws IOException {
try {
Object contt = msg.getContent();
if (contt instanceof Multipart) {
System.out.println("Met attachment");
handleMultipart((Multipart) contt);
} else {
handlePart(msg);
System.out.println("Zonder attachment");
}
} catch (MessagingException ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
public static void handleMultipart(Multipart multipart)
throws MessagingException, IOException {
for (int i = 0, n = multipart.getCount(); i < n; i++) {
handlePart(multipart.getBodyPart(i));
System.out.println("Count "+n);
}
}
public static void handlePart(Part part)
throws MessagingException, IOException {
String disposition = part.getDisposition();
String contentType = part.getContentType();
if (disposition == null) { // When just body
System.out.println("Null: " + contentType);
// Check if plain
if ((contentType.length() >= 10)
&& (contentType.toLowerCase().substring(
0, 10).equals("text/plain"))) {
part.writeTo(System.out);
} else if ((contentType.length() >= 9)
&& (contentType.toLowerCase().substring(
0, 9).equals("text/html"))) {
part.writeTo(System.out);
} else if ((contentType.length() >= 9)
&& (contentType.toLowerCase().substring(
0, 9).equals("text/html"))) {
System.out.println("Ook html gevonden");
part.writeTo(System.out);
}else{
System.out.println("Other body: " + contentType);
part.writeTo(System.out);
}
} else if (disposition.equalsIgnoreCase(Part.ATTACHMENT)) {
System.out.println("Attachment: " + part.getFileName()
+ " : " + contentType);
} else if (disposition.equalsIgnoreCase(Part.INLINE)) {
System.out.println("Inline: "
+ part.getFileName()
+ " : " + contentType);
} else {
System.out.println("Other: " + disposition);
}
}
This is what is returned from the System.out.printlns
Null: multipart/alternative; boundary=047d7b6220720b499504ce3786d7
Other body: multipart/alternative; boundary=047d7b6220720b499504ce3786d7
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="047d7b6220720b499504ce3786d7"
--047d7b6220720b499504ce3786d7
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1"
'Text of the message here in normal text'
--047d7b6220720b499504ce3786d7
Content-Type: text/html; charset="ISO-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
'HTML code of the message'
This approach returns the normal text of the e-mail but also the HTML coding of the mail. I really don't understand why this happens, I've googled it but it seems like there is no one else with this problem.
Any help is appreciated,
Thanks!

I found reading e-mail with the JavaMail library much more difficult than expected. I don't blame the JavaMail API, rather I blame my poor understanding of RFC-5322 -- the official definition of Internet e-mail.
As a thought experiment: Consider how complicated an e-mail message can become in the real world. It is possible to "infinitely" embed messages within messages. Each message itself may have multiple attachments (binary or human-readable text). Now imagine how complicated this structure becomes in the JavaMail API after parsing.
A few tips that may help when traversing e-mail with JavaMail:
Message and BodyPart both implement Part.
MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart both implement MimePart.
Where possible, treat everything as a Part or MimePart. This will allow generic traversal methods to be built more easily.
These Part methods will help to traverse:
String getContentType(): Starts with the MIME type. You may be tempted to treat this as a MIME type (with some hacking/cutting/matching), but don't. Better to only use this method inside the debugger for inspection.
Oddly, MIME type cannot be extracted directly. Instead use boolean isMimeType(String) to match. Read docs carefully to learn about powerful wildcards, such as "multipart/*".
Object getContent(): Might be instanceof:
Multipart -- container for more Parts
Cast to Multipart, then iterate as zero-based index with int getCount() and BodyPart getBodyPart(int)
Note: BodyPart implements Part
In my experience, Microsoft Exchange servers regularly provide two copies of the body text: plain text and HTML.
To match plain text, try: Part.isMimeType("text/plain")
To match HTML, try: Part.isMimeType("text/html")
Message (implements Part) -- embedded or attached e-mail
String (just the body text -- plain text or HTML)
See note above about Microsoft Exchange servers.
InputStream (probably a BASE64-encoded attachment)
String getDisposition(): Value may be null
if Part.ATTACHMENT.equalsIgnoreCase(getDisposition()), then call getInputStream() to get raw bytes of the attachment.
Finally, I found the official Javadocs exclude everything in the com.sun.mail package (and possibly more). If you need these, read the code directly, or generate the unfiltered Javadocs by downloading the source and running mvn javadoc:javadoc in the mail project module of the project.

Did you find these JavaMail FAQ entries?
How do I read a message with an attachment and save the attachment?
How do I tell if a message has attachments?
How do I find the main message body in a message that has attachments?

Following up on Kevin's helpful advice, analyzing your email content Java object types with respect to their canonical names (or simple names) can be helpful too. For example, looking at one inbox I've got right now, of 486 messages 399 are Strings, and 87 are MimeMultipart. This suggests that - for my typical email - a strategy that uses instanceof to first peel off Strings is best.
Of the Strings, 394 are text/plain, and 5 are text/html. This will not be the case for most; it's reflective of my email feeds into this particular inbox.
But wait - there's more!!! :-) The HTML sneaks in there nevertheless: of the 87 Multipart's, 70 are multipart/alternative. No guarantees, but most (if not all of these) are TEXT + HTML.
Of the other 17 multipart, incidentally, 15 are multipart/mixed, and 2 are multipart/signed.
My use case with this inbox (and one other) is primarily to aggregate and analyze known mailing list content. I can't ignore any of the messages, but an analysis of this sort helps me make my processing more efficient.