| java.lang.Object | |
| ↳ | com.google.code.javax.mail.internet.MimeUtility |
This is a utility class that provides various MIME related functionality.
There are a set of methods to encode and decode MIME headers as
per RFC 2047. Note that, in general, these methods are
not needed when using methods such as
setSubject and setRecipients; JavaMail
will automatically encode and decode data when using these "higher
level" methods. The methods below are only needed when maniuplating
raw MIME headers using setHeader and getHeader
methods. A brief description on handling such headers is given below:
RFC 822 mail headers must contain only US-ASCII characters. Headers that contain non US-ASCII characters must be encoded so that they contain only US-ASCII characters. Basically, this process involves using either BASE64 or QP to encode certain characters. RFC 2047 describes this in detail.
In Java, Strings contain (16 bit) Unicode characters. ASCII is a subset of Unicode (and occupies the range 0 - 127). A String that contains only ASCII characters is already mail-safe. If the String contains non US-ASCII characters, it must be encoded. An additional complexity in this step is that since Unicode is not yet a widely used charset, one might want to first charset-encode the String into another charset and then do the transfer-encoding.
Note that to get the actual bytes of a mail-safe String (say, for sending over SMTP), one must do
byte[] bytes = string.getBytes("iso-8859-1");
The setHeader and addHeader methods
on MimeMessage and MimeBodyPart assume that the given header values
are Unicode strings that contain only US-ASCII characters. Hence
the callers of those methods must insure that the values they pass
do not contain non US-ASCII characters. The methods in this class
help do this.
The getHeader family of methods on MimeMessage and
MimeBodyPart return the raw header value. These might be encoded
as per RFC 2047, and if so, must be decoded into Unicode Strings.
The methods in this class help to do this.
Several System properties control strict conformance to the MIME spec. Note that these are not session properties but must be set globally as System properties.
The mail.mime.decodetext.strict property controls
decoding of MIME encoded words. The MIME spec requires that encoded
words start at the beginning of a whitespace separated word. Some
mailers incorrectly include encoded words in the middle of a word.
If the mail.mime.decodetext.strict System property is
set to "false", an attempt will be made to decode these
illegal encoded words. The default is true.
The mail.mime.encodeeol.strict property controls the
choice of Content-Transfer-Encoding for MIME parts that are not of
type "text". Often such parts will contain textual data for which
an encoding that allows normal end of line conventions is appropriate.
In rare cases, such a part will appear to contain entirely textual
data, but will require an encoding that preserves CR and LF characters
without change. If the mail.mime.encodeeol.strict
System property is set to "true", such an encoding will
be used when necessary. The default is false.
In addition, the mail.mime.charset System property can
be used to specify the default MIME charset to use for encoded words
and text parts that don't otherwise specify a charset. Normally, the
default MIME charset is derived from the default Java charset, as
specified in the file.encoding System property. Most
applications will have no need to explicitly set the default MIME
charset. In cases where the default MIME charset to be used for
mail messages is different than the charset used for files stored on
the system, this property should be set.
The current implementation also supports the following System property.
The mail.mime.ignoreunknownencoding property controls
whether unknown values in the Content-Transfer-Encoding
header, as passed to the decode method, cause an exception.
If set to "true", unknown values are ignored and 8bit
encoding is assumed. Otherwise, unknown values cause a MessagingException
to be thrown.
| Constants | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| int | ALL | ||||||||||
| int | ALL_ASCII | ||||||||||
| int | MOSTLY_ASCII | ||||||||||
| int | MOSTLY_NONASCII | ||||||||||
| Fields | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| decodeStrict | |||||||||||
| defaultJavaCharset | |||||||||||
| defaultMIMECharset | |||||||||||
| encodeEolStrict | |||||||||||
| foldEncodedWords | |||||||||||
| foldText | |||||||||||
| ignoreUnknownEncoding | |||||||||||
| java2mime | |||||||||||
| mime2java | |||||||||||
| Public Methods | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Decode the given input stream.
| |||||||||||
Decode "unstructured" headers, that is, headers that are defined
as '*text' as per RFC 822.
| |||||||||||
The string is parsed using the rules in RFC 2047 and RFC 2231 for
parsing an "encoded-word".
| |||||||||||
Wrap an encoder around the given output stream.
| |||||||||||
Wrap an encoder around the given output stream.
| |||||||||||
Encode a RFC 822 "text" token into mail-safe form as per
RFC 2047.
| |||||||||||
Encode a RFC 822 "text" token into mail-safe form as per
RFC 2047.
| |||||||||||
Encode a RFC 822 "word" token into mail-safe form as per
RFC 2047.
| |||||||||||
Encode a RFC 822 "word" token into mail-safe form as per
RFC 2047.
| |||||||||||
Fold a string at linear whitespace so that each line is no longer
than 76 characters, if possible.
| |||||||||||
Get the default charset corresponding to the system's current
default locale.
| |||||||||||
Same as
getEncoding(DataSource) except that instead
of reading the data from an InputStream it uses the
writeTo method to examine the data. | |||||||||||
Get the content-transfer-encoding that should be applied
to the input stream of this datasource, to make it mailsafe.
| |||||||||||
Convert a MIME charset name into a valid Java charset name.
| |||||||||||
Convert a java charset into its MIME charset name.
| |||||||||||
A utility method to quote a word, if the word contains any
characters from the specified 'specials' list.
| |||||||||||
Unfold a folded header.
| |||||||||||
|
[Expand]
Inherited Methods | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
From class
java.lang.Object
| |||||||||||
Decode the given input stream. The Input stream returned is the decoded input stream. All the encodings defined in RFC 2045 are supported here. They include "base64", "quoted-printable", "7bit", "8bit", and "binary". In addition, "uuencode" is also supported.
In the current implementation, if the
mail.mime.ignoreunknownencoding system property is set to
"true", unknown encoding values are ignored and the
original InputStream is returned.
| is | Input stream |
|---|---|
| encoding | The encoding of the stream. |
| MessagingException | if the encoding is unknown |
|---|
Decode "unstructured" headers, that is, headers that are defined as '*text' as per RFC 822.
The string is decoded using the algorithm specified in RFC 2047, Section 6.1. If the charset-conversion fails for any sequence, an UnsupportedEncodingException is thrown. If the String is not an RFC 2047 style encoded header, it is returned as-is
Example of usage:
MimePart part = ...
String rawvalue = null;
String value = null;
try {
if ((rawvalue = part.getHeader("X-mailer")[0]) != null)
value = MimeUtility.decodeText(rawvalue);
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
// Don't care
value = rawvalue;
} catch (MessagingException me) { }
return value;
| etext | The possibly encoded value |
|---|
| UnsupportedEncodingException | if the charset conversion failed. |
|---|
The string is parsed using the rules in RFC 2047 and RFC 2231 for parsing an "encoded-word". If the parse fails, a ParseException is thrown. Otherwise, it is transfer-decoded, and then charset-converted into Unicode. If the charset-conversion fails, an UnsupportedEncodingException is thrown.
| eword | The encoded value |
|---|
| ParseException | if the string is not an encoded-word as per RFC 2047 and RFC 2231. |
|---|---|
| UnsupportedEncodingException | if the charset conversion failed. |
Wrap an encoder around the given output stream.
All the encodings defined in RFC 2045 are supported here.
They include "base64", "quoted-printable", "7bit", "8bit" and
"binary". In addition, "uuencode" is also supported.
The filename parameter is used with the "uuencode"
encoding and is included in the encoded output.
| os | Output stream |
|---|---|
| encoding | The encoding of the stream. |
| filename | Name for the file being encoded (only used with uuencode) |
| MessagingException |
|---|
Wrap an encoder around the given output stream. All the encodings defined in RFC 2045 are supported here. They include "base64", "quoted-printable", "7bit", "8bit" and "binary". In addition, "uuencode" is also supported.
| os | Output stream |
|---|---|
| encoding | The encoding of the stream. |
| MessagingException | if the encoding is unknown |
|---|
Encode a RFC 822 "text" token into mail-safe form as per RFC 2047.
The given Unicode string is examined for non US-ASCII characters. If the string contains only US-ASCII characters, it is returned as-is. If the string contains non US-ASCII characters, it is first character-encoded using the specified charset, then transfer-encoded using either the B or Q encoding. The resulting bytes are then returned as a Unicode string containing only ASCII characters.
Note that this method should be used to encode only "unstructured" RFC 822 headers.
| text | The header value |
|---|---|
| charset | The charset. If this parameter is null, the platform's default chatset is used. |
| encoding | The encoding to be used. Currently supported values are "B" and "Q". If this parameter is null, then the "Q" encoding is used if most of characters to be encoded are in the ASCII charset, otherwise "B" encoding is used. |
| UnsupportedEncodingException |
|---|
Encode a RFC 822 "text" token into mail-safe form as per RFC 2047.
The given Unicode string is examined for non US-ASCII characters. If the string contains only US-ASCII characters, it is returned as-is. If the string contains non US-ASCII characters, it is first character-encoded using the platform's default charset, then transfer-encoded using either the B or Q encoding. The resulting bytes are then returned as a Unicode string containing only ASCII characters.
Note that this method should be used to encode only "unstructured" RFC 822 headers.
Example of usage:
MimePart part = ...
String rawvalue = "FooBar Mailer, Japanese version 1.1"
try {
// If we know for sure that rawvalue contains only US-ASCII
// characters, we can skip the encoding part
part.setHeader("X-mailer", MimeUtility.encodeText(rawvalue));
} catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
// encoding failure
} catch (MessagingException me) {
// setHeader() failure
}
| text | Unicode string |
|---|
| UnsupportedEncodingException | if the encoding fails |
|---|
Encode a RFC 822 "word" token into mail-safe form as per RFC 2047.
The given Unicode string is examined for non US-ASCII characters. If the string contains only US-ASCII characters, it is returned as-is. If the string contains non US-ASCII characters, it is first character-encoded using the specified charset, then transfer-encoded using either the B or Q encoding. The resulting bytes are then returned as a Unicode string containing only ASCII characters.
| word | Unicode string |
|---|---|
| charset | The MIME charset |
| encoding | The encoding to be used. Currently supported values are "B" and "Q". If this parameter is null, then the "Q" encoding is used if most of characters to be encoded are in the ASCII charset, otherwise "B" encoding is used. |
| UnsupportedEncodingException | if the encoding fails |
|---|
Encode a RFC 822 "word" token into mail-safe form as per RFC 2047.
The given Unicode string is examined for non US-ASCII characters. If the string contains only US-ASCII characters, it is returned as-is. If the string contains non US-ASCII characters, it is first character-encoded using the platform's default charset, then transfer-encoded using either the B or Q encoding. The resulting bytes are then returned as a Unicode string containing only ASCII characters.
This method is meant to be used when creating RFC 822 "phrases". The InternetAddress class, for example, uses this to encode it's 'phrase' component.
| word | Unicode string |
|---|
| UnsupportedEncodingException | if the encoding fails |
|---|
Fold a string at linear whitespace so that each line is no longer
than 76 characters, if possible. If there are more than 76
non-whitespace characters consecutively, the string is folded at
the first whitespace after that sequence. The parameter
used indicates how many characters have been used in
the current line; it is usually the length of the header name.
Note that line breaks in the string aren't escaped; they probably should be.
| used | Characters used in line so far |
|---|---|
| s | The string to fold |
Get the default charset corresponding to the system's current
default locale. If the System property mail.mime.charset
is set, a system charset corresponding to this MIME charset will be
returned.
Same as getEncoding(DataSource) except that instead
of reading the data from an InputStream it uses the
writeTo method to examine the data. This is more
efficient in the common case of a DataHandler
created with an object and a MIME type (for example, a
"text/plain" String) because all the I/O is done in this
thread. In the case requiring an InputStream the
DataHandler uses a thread, a pair of pipe streams,
and the writeTo method to produce the data.
| dh |
|---|
Get the content-transfer-encoding that should be applied to the input stream of this datasource, to make it mailsafe.
The algorithm used here is:
| ds | DataSource |
|---|
Convert a MIME charset name into a valid Java charset name.
| charset | The MIME charset name |
|---|
Convert a java charset into its MIME charset name.
Note that a future version of JDK (post 1.2) might provide this functionality, in which case, we may deprecate this method then.
| charset | The JDK charset |
|---|
A utility method to quote a word, if the word contains any characters from the specified 'specials' list.
The HeaderTokenizer class defines two special
sets of delimiters - MIME and RFC 822.
This method is typically used during the generation of RFC 822 and MIME header fields.
| word | Word to be quoted |
|---|---|
| specials | The set of special characters |
Unfold a folded header. Any line breaks that aren't escaped and are followed by whitespace are removed.
| s | The string to unfold |
|---|