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Lua

Attach an Email to Another Email

See more Email Object Examples

Demonstrates the Chilkat Email.AttachEmail method, which attaches a copy of another email to this email object. The attached email is encapsulated in a message/rfc822 subpart. Because a copy is attached, later changes to the source email do not affect the embedded message. This example attaches one email to another.

Background: "Forward as attachment" produces exactly this structure: the original message is embedded whole as a message/rfc822 part rather than quoted into the body. This preserves the original's headers and formatting intact, which matters for forwarding to a mailbox that will re-parse it, or for reporting spam/phishing with the original evidence attached. Such parts are counted by NumAttachedMessages.

Chilkat Lua Downloads

Lua
local chilkat = require("chilkat")

-- Demonstrates the AttachEmail method, which attaches a copy of another email to this email
-- object.  The attached email is encapsulated in a message/rfc822 subpart.

local innerEmail = chilkat.Email.new()
innerEmail.subject = "Original message"
innerEmail.from = "alice@example.com"
innerEmail.body = "This is the original message being forwarded."

local email = chilkat.Email.new()
email.subject = "FW: Original message"
email.from = "bob@example.com"
email.body = "See the attached original email."

-- Attach a copy of the inner email as a message/rfc822 part.

local success = email:attach_email(innerEmail)
if not success then
    print(email.last_error_text)
    return
end

print("NumAttachedMessages = " .. email.num_attached_messages)