CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsbase64actionmailerdecode
Jacky
Jacky

Reputation: 49

In ruby on rails, how do you decode a content-transfer-encoding base64 Mail object

I am working on ruby on rails ActionMailer. What I have done is that I had a background process polling my gmail account and I retrieve mails with 'RFC822' protocol. I then send these mails to a receive method inside my ActionMailer class.

While I can successfully process almost all of the incoming mails, sometimes I do encounter international mails, which have accent marks in english characters. When displaying the bodies of these mails to STDOUT, they appear to be some random characters as follow because I think the decoding is wrong...

This is the body of the mail object when I print it on the screen:

"PGh0bWw+PGhlYWQ+PG1ldGEgaHR0cC1lcXVpdj0iQ29udGVudC1MYW5ndWFnZSIgY29udGVudD0i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="

These international mails have Content-Transfer-Encoding:base64 as opposed to 7bit. So what do I need to do so that I can correctly decode the email? I have tried things like Base64.decode64, but it complains that there is no unpack method defined.

I have been working on this for couple hours with no luck. Could anyone please help me?

Thank you

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1614

Answers (2)

dominik
dominik

Reputation: 137

At least nowadays ActionMailer is able to correctly decode those emails. This should work:

message = Mail.new(encoded_body)
message.html_part.body.decoded

Upvotes: 3

Daniel Rikowski
Daniel Rikowski

Reputation: 72534

It looks like the parameter you provide to Base64.decode is not a string. (Because decode falls back to String.unpack)

From ruby-doc:

def decode64(str)
  str.unpack("m").first
end

Upvotes: 1

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