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Mahesh YadavFlag for India

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Different boundary in email header and body

Hi,
We are working on reading emails and then store their data in database.

Our email read function working fine but we face problem when email contains different boundary in header and body. In that case the body content is not saved and garbage value is displayed in place of email body.

like in one sample email the boundry value in header is:
"\tboundary=\"----=_NextPart_000_0023_01CD164E.F0EDAA20\"\r\n"

and in body is:
"\tboundary=\"----=_NextPart_001_0024_01CD164E.F0F01B20\"\r\n"

Can you please suggest me to understand why email contains different boundaries and how we handle this problem.

Please find that sample email attached.
FW--font-7-5.msg
Avatar of Dave Baldwin
Dave Baldwin
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I don't know what that file is but it is Not an email message.  Emails typically have more than one boundary because they have been forwarded and each email client that formats the message as an HTML email adds their own boundary codes.
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ASKER

Hi DaveBaldwin,

Thanks for the answer, but can you plz tell me how do i handle this problem as the mail header contains one boundary and body is seperated by other boundary.

The attached file is a .msg file which can be opened in microsoft outlook.

Thanks
Heeralal
It is pretty common for mails to contain more than one boundary - but in each case, there will be a boundary header that lets you know the grouping for which the boundary is the marker.

in your case, you have a nested structure which I have diagrammed in the attached file.

in text though, the "outer" layer contains the nest plus an attached file.
the "middle" layer contains a nest plus a gif image
the "inner" layer contains a text and a html body as alternatives.
MIME-Structure.txt
You could make your program more sophisticated and able to recognize multiple boundaries.  But the problem is that it would be very difficult for your program to know what is important enough to be saved.
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Dave Howe
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