EWS: Sending Email with Attachment

A requirement in an Outlook Web Add-in I am working on required the ability to send an email to an alias with another email as an attachment. I found this a bit challenging as the makeEwsRequestAsync() function limits us to only a handful of EWS functions (EWS operations that add-ins support). This means I was unable to use a lot of the samples I found on the web. However, with the UpdateItem method, I found a way.

First, let me say, I have been asked – why is easyEWS.js not on GitHub. Well, now it is:

https://github.com/davecra/easyEWS

Additionally, you can now reference the latest and greatest in your project at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davecra/easyEWS/master/easyEws.js.

Next, so I updated the functionality in easeEws via two function:

• easyEws.getMailItemMimeContent – we use this function to get the MIME content of a specified mail item by the ID.
• easyEws.sendPlainTextEmailWithAttachment – this function, although a tad more complicated, will create a very simple plain text email and add an attachment send it and save it to the drafts folder.

Here are the two new updates:

[code lang=”javascript” collapse=”true” title=”click to expand if the docs.com embedding below is not visible.”]
// PUBLIC: creates a new emails message with a single attachment and sends it
// RETURNS: ‘success’ is compelted successfully
easyEws.sendPlainTextEmailWithAttachment = function (subject, body, to, attachmentName, attachmentMime, successCallback, errorCallback) {
var soap = ‘<m:CreateItem MessageDisposition="SendAndSaveCopy">’ +
‘ <m:Items>’ +
‘ <t:Message>’ +
‘ <t:Subject>’ + subject + ‘</t:Subject>’ +
‘ <t:Body BodyType="Text">’ + body + ‘</t:Body>’ +
‘ <t:Attachments>’ +
‘ <t:ItemAttachment>’ +
‘ <t:Name>’ + attachmentName + ‘</t:Name>’ +
‘ <t:IsInline>false</t:IsInline>’ +
‘ <t:Message>’ +
‘ <t:MimeContent CharacterSet="UTF-8">’ + attachmentMime + ‘</t:MimeContent>’ +
‘ </t:Message>’ +
‘ </t:ItemAttachment>’ +
‘ </t:Attachments>’ +
‘ <t:ToRecipients><t:Mailbox><t:EmailAddress>’ + to + ‘</t:EmailAddress></t:Mailbox></t:ToRecipients>’ +
‘ </t:Message>’ +
‘ </m:Items>’ +
‘</m:CreateItem>’;

soap = getSoapHeader(soap);

// make the EWS call
asyncEws(soap, function (xmlDoc) {
// Get the required response, and if it’s NoError then all has succeeded, so tell the user.
// Otherwise, tell them what the problem was. (E.G. Recipient email addresses might have been
// entered incorrectly — try it and see for yourself what happens!!)
var result = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("ResponseCode")[0].textContent;
if (result == "NoError") {
successCallback(result);
}
else {
successCallback("The following error code was recieved: " + result);
}
}, function (errorDetails) {
if (errorCallback != null)
errorCallback(errorDetails);
});
};

// PUBLIC: gets the mail item as raw MIME data
// RETURNS: the entire email message as a MIME Base64 string
easyEws.getMailItemMimeContent = function (mailItemId, successCallback, errorCallback) {
var soap =
‘<m:GetItem>’ +
‘ <m:ItemShape>’ +
‘ <t:BaseShape>IdOnly</t:BaseShape>’ +
‘ <t:IncludeMimeContent>true</t:IncludeMimeContent>’ +
‘ </m:ItemShape>’ +
‘ <m:ItemIds>’ +
‘ <t:ItemId Id="’ + mailItemId + ‘"/>’ +
‘ </m:ItemIds>’ +
‘</m:GetItem>’;
soap = getSoapHeader(soap);
// make the EWS call
asyncEws(soap, function (xmlDoc) {
//var content = xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("MimeContent")[0].textContent;
successCallback(xmlDoc);
}, function (errorDetails) {
if (errorCallback != null)
errorCallback(errorDetails);
});
};
[/code]

Additionally, you no longer need to call initialize on easyEws. And you can simply add a reference to it in your HTML to always get the latest:

<script src=”https://raw.githubusercontent.com/davecra/easyEWS/master/easyEws.js“ type=”text/javascript”>script>

Once added, you can use EasyEWS.js on your projects. In my particular project, I used the following code, which does the following:

• Gets the current mail item (entirely) as a base64 encoded string. This is the full MIME representation of the message.
• It then creates a new mail item and sends it with a comment from the user to the email address specified with an attachment (which is the base64 string we got in the first step).

This is all done with EWS and because of easyEWS.js, it is done in very few lines of code:

[code lang=”javascript” collapse=”true” title=”click to expand if the docs.com embedding below is not visible.”]
// Loads the form items to attach to events
function loadForm() {
$("#forward-button").click(function () {
getCurrentMessage();
});
}

// This function handles the click event of the sendNow button.
// It retrieves the current mail item, so that we can get its itemId property
// ans also get the MIME content
// It also retrieves the mailbox, so that we can make an EWS request
// to get more properties of the item.
function getCurrentMessage() {
var item = Office.context.mailbox.item;
itemId = item.itemId;
mailbox = Office.context.mailbox;
try{
easyEws.getMailItemMimeContent(itemId, sendMessageCallback, showErrorCallback);
} catch (error) {
showNotification("Unspecified error.", err.Message);
}
}

// This function is the callback for the getMailItemMimeContent method
// in the getCurrentMessage function.
// In brief, it first checks for an error repsonse, but if all is OK
// t:ItemId element.
// Recieves: mail message content as a Base64 MIME string
function sendMessageCallback(content) {
var toAddress = "bob@contoso.com";
var comment = $("#forward-comment").val();
if (comment == null || comment == ”) {
comment = "[user provided no comment]";
}
try{
easyEws.sendPlainTextEmailWithAttachment("Message with Item Attachment",
comment,
toAddress,
"Email Attachment",
content,
successCallback,
showErrorCallback);
}
catch (error) {
showNotification("Unspecified error.", err.Message);
}
}

// This function is the callback for the easyEws sendPlainTextEmailWithAttachment
// Recieves: a message that the result was successful.
function successCallback(result) {
showNotification("Success", result);
}

// This function will display errors that occur
// we use this as a callback for errors in easyEws
function showErrorCallback(error) {
showNotification("Error", error);// .error.message);
}
[/code]