Lua Requires Chilkat v9.5.0.95+

Iterate MIME Parts of an Email

See more Email Object Examples

Demonstrates how to iterate over the MIME sub-parts of an email, and retrieve the content of each MIME sub-part body. Lua

local chilkat = require("chilkat")

-- This example assumes the Chilkat API to have been previously unlocked.
-- See Global Unlock Sample for sample code.

-- See the following Chilkat post to Quickly Understand Email MIME

local email = chilkat.Email.new()

local success = email:load_eml("qa_data/eml/sample.eml")
if not success then
    print("Failed to load .eml")
    return
end

local sbContentType = chilkat.StringBuilder.new()
local caseSensitive = false

-- Get the total number of non-multipart MIME sub-parts.
-- (This is a simple way of iterating over all the MIME leaf parts regardless of the MIME tree structure)
local inlineOnly = false
local excludeAttachments = false
local searchSpec = "*/*"

local numParts = email:get_num_parts_of_type(searchSpec, inlineOnly, excludeAttachments)
local i = 0
while i < numParts do
    -- What is the Content-Type of this MIME part?
    sbContentType:append(email:get_nth_content_type(i, searchSpec, inlineOnly, excludeAttachments))
    if sbContentType:starts_with("text/", caseSensitive) then
        -- Get the text body of this MIME part.
        local textBody = email:get_nth_text_part_of_type(i, searchSpec, inlineOnly, excludeAttachments)
        print("Got text body for " .. sbContentType:get_as_string())
    elseif sbContentType:contents_equal("message/rfc822", caseSensitive) then
        -- If the Content-Type is message/rfc822, then the MIME body for this part contains a full embedded MIME messages.
        -- Your application could load it into a Chilkat email object and recursively process...
        local attachedEmail = chilkat.Email.new()
        local bdMime = chilkat.BinData.new()
        email:get_nth_binary_part_of_type_bd(i, searchSpec, inlineOnly, excludeAttachments, bdMime)
        attachedEmail:set_from_mime_bd(bdMime)
        -- Now your app can recursively process the attachedEmail...
    else
        -- Get the bytes of this MIME body part.
        local bd = chilkat.BinData.new()
        email:get_nth_binary_part_of_type_bd(i, searchSpec, inlineOnly, excludeAttachments, bd)
        print("Got binary body for " .. sbContentType:get_as_string() .. " numBytes = " .. bd.num_bytes)
    end

    sbContentType:clear()
    i = i + 1
end