IOS: sending email with attachment adds another attached (.txt) file automatically

attachmentemailiospdfuiview

I am using the following code to send an email with the contents of NSData object(with the variable name: data):

MFMailComposeViewController *controller = [[MFMailComposeViewController alloc] init];

[controller setSubject:@"Subject"];
[controller addAttachmentData:data mimeType:@"application/pdf" fileName:@"Attachment"];
[controller setMessageBody:@"Please find attached the connections for..." isHTML:NO];

controller.mailComposeDelegate = self;
[self presentModalViewController:controller animated:YES];

It adds a UIView generated as a pdf as an attachment and sends the email. It is all good, besides a single problem:

When the email is received, along with the attached pdf, there is another attached .txt file whose contents are: "Sent from my iPad" . If I do not attach the pdf, the "Sent from my iPad" message appears in the body of the email, instead in an attached file.

Does anyone have a clue how this can be resolved ? I do not want the text file to be attached in the message.

Regards,

Petar

Best Answer

It seems that when you send an email with an attachment, everything in it is wrapped up as a multipart/mixed message, and everything encoded as Base64, including the message body and the signature! So it looks like this...

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
    boundary="_003_81E0DB72B1F643FBAA40D9BCB66A11E4_"

--_003_81E0DB72B1F643FBAA40D9BCB66A11E4_
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

SGkgTW9tIQ==

(that's "Hi Mom!" encoded as Base64)

--_003_81E0DB72B1F643FBAA40D9BCB66A11E4_
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="MyAttachment.xlsx"
Content-Description: MyAttachment.xlsx
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="MyAttachment.xlsx"; size=15262
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

UEsDBBQABgAIAAAAIQA3Mb2RgAEAAIQFAAATAAgCW0NvbnRlbnRfVHlwZXNdLnhtbCCiBAIooAAC

snip

AF81AABkb2NQcm9wcy9hcHAueG1sUEsFBgAAAAANAA0AaAMAACA4AAAAAA==

--_003_81E0DB72B1F643FBAA40D9BCB66A11E4_

Content-Type: text/html; name="ATT00001.htm"
Content-Description: ATT00001.htm
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="ATT00001.htm"; size=91
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

PGh0bWw+PGJvZHkgYmdjb2xvcj0iI0ZGRkZGRiI+PGRpdj48L2Rpdj48ZGl2Pjxicj48YnI+U2VudCBmcm9tIG15IGlQYWQ8L2Rpdj48L2JvZHk+PC9odG1sPg==

(that's <html><body bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><div></div><div><br><br>Sent from my iPad</div></body></html> as Base64)

--_003_81E0DB72B1F643FBAA40D9BCB66A11E4_--

Even if you go to Settings >> Mail, Contacts, Calendars and erase the signature, you still get an empty HTML document attached.

The right long-term answer will probably be to submit this to Apple as a bug and wait. In the meantime, if this is really a showstopper bug, I'd suggest that you generate the entire multipart/mixed email body yourself, without the signature, and see if that fools MFMailComposeViewController into thinking that the email doesn't have an attachment. Personally, I think I'm just going to tell my customer to live with it. :)

Related Solutions

Iphone – Not able to send email from an app with MFMailComposeViewController

Use this code this will definitely work:

    -(IBAction)send{

        [self callMailComposer];
    }

    -(void)callMailComposer{

        Class mailClass = (NSClassFromString(@"MFMailComposeViewController"));
        if (mailClass != nil)
        {
        // We must always check whether the current device is configured for sending emails
            if ([mailClass canSendMail])
                [self displayComposerSheet];
            else
                [self launchMailAppOnDevice];
        }

        else
        {
            [self launchMailAppOnDevice];
        }
    }


    #pragma mark -
    #pragma mark Compose Mail
    #pragma mark 

    // Displays an email composition interface inside the application. Populates all the Mail fields. 
    -(void)displayComposerSheet{

        MFMailComposeViewController *picker = [[MFMailComposeViewController alloc] init];


        picker.mailComposeDelegate = self;
        NSString *tosubject =@"";
        [picker setSubject:tosubject];


        // Set up recipients
        [picker setCcRecipients:nil];   
        [picker setBccRecipients:nil];

        [picker setToRecipients:nil];



        [picker setMessageBody:strNewsLink isHTML:NO];

        [self presentModalViewController:picker animated:YES];

        if(picker) [picker release];
        if(picker) picker=nil;

    }


    // Dismisses the email composition interface when users tap Cancel or Send. Proceeds to update the message field with the result of the operation.

        - (void)mailComposeController:(MFMailComposeViewController*)controller didFinishWithResult:(MFMailComposeResult)result error:(NSError*)error
{    
  NSString* alertMessage;
  // message.hidden = NO;
  // Notifies users about errors associated with the interface
  switch (result)
  {
    case MFMailComposeResultCancelled:
      alertMessage = @"Email composition cancelled";
      break;
    case MFMailComposeResultSaved:
      alertMessage = @"Your e-mail has been saved successfully";

      break;
    case MFMailComposeResultSent:
      alertMessage = @"Your email has been sent successfully";

      break;
    case MFMailComposeResultFailed:
      alertMessage = @"Failed to send email";

      break;
    default:
      alertMessage = @"Email Not Sent";

      break;
  }

  UIAlertView* alertView = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"My app name" 
                                                      message:alertMessage
                                                     delegate:nil
                                            cancelButtonTitle:@"OK"
                                            otherButtonTitles:nil];
  [alertView show];
  [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}


    #pragma mark 
    #pragma mark Workaround
    #pragma mark
    // Launches the Mail application on the device.

        -(void)launchMailAppOnDevice{

        NSString *recipients = @"mailto:?cc=&subject=";
        NSString *body = @"&body=";
        NSString *email = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@%@", recipients, body];
        email = [email stringByAddingPercentEscapesUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding];
        [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:email]];

    }

Python – Sending a PDF attachment with a HTML+plain_text email in Python

Such a message should have a more complex structure. The message itself contains two "top-level" MIME parts and has content-type "multipart/mixed". The first of these MIME part has type of "multipart/alternative" with two subparts, one for plain text and another for HTML. The second of the main parts is PDF attachment

pdfAttachment = MIMEApplication(pdf, _subtype = "pdf")
pdfAttachment.add_header('content-disposition', 'attachment', filename = ('utf-8', '', 'payment.pdf'))
text = MIMEMultipart('alternative')
text.attach(MIMEText("Some plain text", "plain", _charset="utf-8"))
text.attach(MIMEText("<html><head>Some HTML text</head><body><h1>Some HTML Text</h1> Another line of text</body></html>", "html", _charset="utf-8"))
message = MIMEMultipart('mixed')
message.attach(text)
message.attach(pdfAttachment)
message['Subject'] = 'Test multipart message'
f = open("message.msg", "wb")
f.write(bytes(message.as_string(), 'utf-8'))
f.close()

You may try to open a "source view" of a message in your favorite mail program (mail user agent) and see yourself (Ctrl-U in Thunderbird)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Iphone – Not able to send email from an app with MFMailComposeViewController

Python – Sending a PDF attachment with a HTML+plain_text email in Python

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