DataFlex

Get the Number of Body Alternatives in an Email

Demonstrates the read-only Chilkat Email.NumAlternatives property, which is the number of body representations present in the email. A representation may be plain text, HTML, iCalendar, or another body format. A normal email with one body returns 1, while a multipart/alternative email returns the number of alternatives it contains. Alternative indexes used by methods such as GetAlternativeBody are zero-based. This example builds an email with plain-text and HTML alternatives and prints the count.

Background: MIME organizes a message as a tree of parts. multipart/alternative holds several versions of the same content (the client shows the best one it supports); multipart/mixed combines a body with attachments; and multipart/related bundles an HTML body with the inline images it references. A rich email nests these, for example:

multipart/mixed
  multipart/alternative
    text/plain
    multipart/related
      text/html
      image/png
  application/pdf

Here the text/plain part and the multipart/related part are the two alternatives.

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DataFlex

Use ChilkatAx-win32.pkg

Procedure Test
    Handle hoEmail
    Boolean iSuccess
    Integer iTemp1

    //  Demonstrates the read-only Email.NumAlternatives property, which is the
    //  number of body representations (plain text, HTML, iCalendar, etc.) in the email.

    Get Create (RefClass(cComChilkatEmail)) To hoEmail
    If (Not(IsComObjectCreated(hoEmail))) Begin
        Send CreateComObject of hoEmail
    End

    //  Set a plain-text body and add an HTML alternative.  This creates a
    //  multipart/alternative email with two representations.
    Send ComSetTextBody To hoEmail "This is the plain-text alternative." "text/plain"
    Get ComAddHtmlAlternativeBody Of hoEmail "<html><body><b>This is the HTML alternative.</b></body></html>" To iSuccess

    //  Alternative indexes (used by GetAlternativeBody) are zero-based.
    Get ComNumAlternatives Of hoEmail To iTemp1
    Showln "NumAlternatives = " iTemp1


End_Procedure