Delphi ActiveX

Build an EDIFACT Email Body

Demonstrates the Chilkat Email.SetEdifactBody method, a convenience that constructs the customary MIME headers and body for sending an EDIFACT message. It sets the body to the EDIFACT content, sets Content-Transfer-Encoding to Base64, sets Content-Type to application/EDIFACT (with a name attribute from the 2nd argument), and sets Content-Disposition to attachment (with a filename from the 3rd argument). The 4th argument is the charset the message is converted to before Base64 encoding. The subject, recipients, and FROM are left unchanged.

Background: EDIFACT is a long-standing international standard for Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) — structured business documents such as purchase orders (ORDERS) and invoices (INVOIC) exchanged between trading partners. Sending EDIFACT over email requires wrapping the payload in a specific set of MIME headers; SetEdifactBody handles that boilerplate so the message is formatted the way EDI systems expect.

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var
email: TChilkatEmail;
edi: WideString;

begin
//  Demonstrates the SetEdifactBody method, which builds a typical email for sending an
//  EDIFACT message.  It sets the body to the EDIFACT content, sets Content-Transfer-Encoding
//  to Base64, Content-Type to application/EDIFACT (with a name attribute), and
//  Content-Disposition to attachment (with a filename).  The fourth argument is the charset.

email := TChilkatEmail.Create(Self);
email.Subject := 'EDIFACT ORDERS message';
email.From := 'edi@example.com';
email.AddTo('Trading Partner','partner@example.com');

//  The EDIFACT message content (an ORDERS interchange, abbreviated here).
edi := 'UNA:+.? ''UNB+UNOB:1+SENDER+RECEIVER+260710:1200+1''UNH+1+ORDERS:D:96A:UN''BGM+220+ORD12345+9''UNT+3+1''UNZ+1+1''';

//  Build the EDIFACT email body.
email.SetEdifactBody(edi,'order.edi','order.edi','iso-8859-1');

Memo1.Lines.Add(email.GetMime());