(C# UWP/WinRT) MIME Body vs. Sub-Parts

Explains the difference between sub-parts and body.

MIME documents (i.e. messages) can have a nested structure. The simplest MIME message contains a header followed by content (possibly encoded). The header is delimited from the content by two consecutive CRLF's.

A MIME message may be multipart. If so, then the Content-Type header field indicates "multipart" and the content the follows the header is itself a MIME message, which may also be multipart, etc. You can see how MIME messages effectively have a tree structure. The non-leaf nodes have Content-Types that are "multipart/" and the leaf nodes have non-multipart Content-Types.

The Chilkat MIME component/library uses two terms that need to be understood in order to effectively use the API. These are "body" and "sub-part". A multipart node has 1 or more sub-parts, but its body is empty. A leaf node (i.e. non-multipart node) has no sub-parts, but the body is (usually) non-empty.

This example creates a multipart MIME message and shows the results of getting the sub-parts and body of each node.

Chilkat Universal Windows Platform (UWP) / WinRT Downloads Chilkat for the Universal Windows Platform (UWP)

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

Chilkat.Mime mime = new Chilkat.Mime();

// Create a multipart/mixed MIME message with two sub-parts.
// We'll use the Base64 encoding for the 2nd sub-part.
Chilkat.Mime part1 = new Chilkat.Mime();
bool success = part1.SetBodyFromPlainText("This is part 1");

Chilkat.Mime part2 = new Chilkat.Mime();
success = part2.SetBodyFromPlainText("This is part 2");
part2.Encoding = "base64";

success = mime.NewMultipartMixed();
mime.UseMmDescription = false;
success = mime.AppendPart(part1);
success = mime.AppendPart(part2);

// Show the MIME message:
Debug.WriteLine(mime.GetMime());

// Here's the MIME:
// Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
// 	boundary="------------040605030407000302060008"
// 
// --------------040605030407000302060008
// Content-Type: text/plain;
// 	 charset="us-ascii"
// Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
// 
// This is part 1
// --------------040605030407000302060008
// Content-Type: text/plain;
// 	 charset="us-ascii"
// Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
// 
// VGhpcyBpcyBwYXJ0IDI=
// 
// --------------040605030407000302060008--

// If we examine the root node of the MIME message, 
// we see that it has 2 sub-parts and the body is empty (as expected)
int n = mime.NumParts;
Debug.WriteLine("Num Parts = " + Convert.ToString(n));
Debug.WriteLine("Body = " + mime.GetBodyDecoded());

// The GetEntireBody retrieves the entire content after
// the header.  (Perhaps GetEntireBody should've been named
// GetEntireContent to make it less confusing...)
Debug.WriteLine("---- EntireBody:");
Debug.WriteLine(mime.GetEntireBody());
Debug.WriteLine("********");

// Now examine the 2nd sub-part.  It has a body encoded
// using base64.  Get the contents of the body in both
// decoded and encoded forms:
Chilkat.Mime part = null;
// index 0 is the 1st part, index 1 is the 2nd part.
part = mime.GetPart(1);
Debug.WriteLine("Decoded Body:");
Debug.WriteLine(part.GetBodyDecoded());
Debug.WriteLine("Encoded Body:");
Debug.WriteLine(part.GetBodyEncoded());