CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaemailencodingdesktopmailto
Marius
Marius

Reputation: 21

Desktop.Action.MAIL encoding subject and body strings correctly for mailto: in URI

I have a question specific to the Java Desktop API in Java 6, more specifically desktop.mail(URI uri)..

I was wondering if there is a function one could use to ensure that the Subject and Body in f.ex:

mailToURI = new URI("mailto", getToEmails() + "?SUBJECT=" + getEmailSubject() + "&BODY=" + getEmailBody(), null);

desktop.mail(mailToURI);

will be kept in accordance with rfc2368 and still be displayed correctly in the email application?

Right now examples of problematic texts are the scandinavian letters: æøå / ÆØÅ and adding complex URLS in the Body containing ampersands (&) and such f.ex: http://www.whatever.com?a=b&c=d etc..

Is there a function in Java that ensures the aboved seeked integrity is preserved when using the mailto: URI scheme with Java Desktops mail(URI) function?

Would it be possible to make one?

At this point I have tried everything I can think of including:

private static final Pattern SIMPLE_CHARS = Pattern.compile("[a-zA-Z0-9]");

private String encodeUnusualChars(String aText) {
    StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
    CharacterIterator iter = new StringCharacterIterator(aText);
    for (char c = iter.first(); c != CharacterIterator.DONE; c = iter.next()) {
        char[] chars = {c};
        String character = new String(chars);
        if (isSimpleCharacter(character)) {
            result.append(c);
        } else {
            //hexEncode(character, "UTF-8", result);
        }
    }
    return result.toString();
}

private boolean isSimpleCharacter(String aCharacter) {
    Matcher matcher = SIMPLE_CHARS.matcher(aCharacter);
    return matcher.matches();
}

/**
For the given character and encoding, appends one or more hex-encoded characters.
For double-byte characters, two hex-encoded items will be appended.
 */
private static void hexEncode(String aCharacter, String aEncoding, StringBuilder aOut) {
    try {
        String HEX_DIGITS = "0123456789ABCDEF";
        byte[] bytes = aCharacter.getBytes(aEncoding);
        for (int idx = 0; idx < bytes.length; idx++) {
            aOut.append('%');
            aOut.append(HEX_DIGITS.charAt((bytes[idx] & 0xf0) >> 4));
            aOut.append(HEX_DIGITS.charAt(bytes[idx] & 0xf));
        }
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex) {
        Logger.getLogger(LocalMail.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
    }
}

At the best I end up with the encoded text in the email that is opened up.

Not providing any special encoding will cause æøå or similar to stop further processing of the content.

I feel I am missing something crucial. Could anyone please enlighten me with a solution to this?

For line breaks I use String NL = System.getProperty("line.separator");

Perhaps there is some System specific stuff that needs to be called to make this work??

By the way I am currently on Mac OS X 10.6.8 with Mail 4.5

marius$ java -version java version "1.6.0_26" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_26-b03-384-10M3425) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 20.1-b02-384, mixed mode)

I really feel there must be a way - otherwise the subject and message part of the desktop.mail(URI) function is completely unreliable to the point of being useless.

Any help to point me in the right direction is greatly appreciated!!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1759

Answers (2)

Gael
Gael

Reputation: 634

Thanks Marius, it's a very useful line of code.

I modified it a bit for performances...

It's better to use "replace" instead of "replaceAll", when you are not using RegExp.

This:

.replace("+", "%20")

is faster than:

.replaceAll("\\+", "%20")

Both replace ALL occurrences, but the first one does not have to do any regexp parsing. http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#replace%28java.lang.CharSequence,%20java.lang.CharSequence%29

Also, if the original string already has \r\n for new lines, the second replace will double the \r. It's not a big issue, but I prefer to remove that one and provide a proper input string:

String result = java.net.URLEncoder.encode(src, "utf-8").replace("+", "%20")

Upvotes: 1

Xmagic
Xmagic

Reputation: 309

Try this, hope it will work for you.

String result = java.net.URLEncoder.encode(src, "utf-8").replaceAll("\\+", "%20").replaceAll("\\%0A", "%0D%0A");

Upvotes: 0

Related Questions