Perl

Zip an Email's Attachments into One File

Demonstrates the Chilkat Email.ZipAttachments method, which replaces all of an email's attachments with a single Zip file attachment having the specified filename. The original attachments are removed and packed into the Zip. This example adds two attachments and zips them into one.

Background: Bundling multiple attachments into a single .zip keeps a message tidy, compresses the payload, and works around recipients or gateways that limit the number of attachments. Note that the filename here (files.zip) names the attachment inside the message — it is not a path on disk. The reverse operation is UnzipAttachments.

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Chilkat2 Perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

# Demonstrates the ZipAttachments method, which replaces all of an email's attachments
# with a single Zip file attachment having the specified filename.  The original
# attachments are removed and packed into the Zip.

my $email = Chilkat2::Email->new;
$email->Subject('Zip the attachments');

$email->AddStringAttachment('a.txt', 'first attachment');
$email->AddStringAttachment('b.txt', 'second attachment');
print 'NumAttachments before = ', $email->NumAttachments, "\n";

# Replace all attachments with a single Zip attachment named "files.zip".
my $success = $email->ZipAttachments('files.zip');
if (!$success) {
    print $email->LastErrorText, "\n";
    exit;
}

print 'NumAttachments after = ', $email->NumAttachments, "\n";