SQL Server

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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--
CREATE PROCEDURE ChilkatSample
AS
BEGIN
    DECLARE @hr int
    DECLARE @iTmp0 int
    --  Demonstrates the read-only Email.NumAlternatives property, which is the
    --  number of body representations (plain text, HTML, iCalendar, etc.) in the email.

    DECLARE @email int
    EXEC @hr = sp_OACreate 'Chilkat.Email', @email OUT
    IF @hr <> 0
    BEGIN
        PRINT 'Failed to create ActiveX component'
        RETURN
    END

    --  Set a plain-text body and add an HTML alternative.  This creates a
    --  multipart/alternative email with two representations.
    EXEC sp_OAMethod @email, 'SetTextBody', NULL, 'This is the plain-text alternative.', 'text/plain'
    DECLARE @success int
    EXEC sp_OAMethod @email, 'AddHtmlAlternativeBody', @success OUT, '<html><body><b>This is the HTML alternative.</b></body></html>'

    --  Alternative indexes (used by GetAlternativeBody) are zero-based.

    EXEC sp_OAGetProperty @email, 'NumAlternatives', @iTmp0 OUT
    PRINT 'NumAlternatives = ' + @iTmp0

    EXEC @hr = sp_OADestroy @email


END
GO