Extract attachments from Emails Leave feedback
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To extract attachments from emails getContainer method is used. This method returns the collection of ContainerItem objects.
Email Attachment can contain the following metadata:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| content-type | The MIME type of the attachment content |
| disposition | The attachment disposition: inline or attachment |
These metadata refer to a container element itself, not a document.
Here are the steps to extract an email text from email attachments:
- Instantiate Parser object for the initial document;
- Call getContainer method and obtain collection of ContainerItem objects;
- Check if collection isn’t null (container extraction is supported for the document);
- Iterate through the collection and obtain Parser object to extract a text.
The following example shows how to extract a text from email attachments:
// Create an instance of Parser class
try (Parser parser = new Parser(Constants.SampleMsg)) {
// Extract attachments from the container
Iterable<ContainerItem> attachments = parser.getContainer();
// Check if container extraction is supported
if (attachments == null) {
System.out.println("Container extraction isn't supported");
}
// Iterate over zip entities
for (ContainerItem item : attachments) {
// Print the file path
System.out.println(item.getFilePath());
// Print metadata
for (MetadataItem metadata : item.getMetadata()) {
System.out.println(String.format("%s: %s", metadata.getName(), metadata.getValue()));
}
try {
// Create Parser object for the zip entity content
try (Parser attachmentParser = item.openParser()) {
// Extract an zip entity text
try (TextReader reader = attachmentParser.getText()) {
System.out.println(reader == null ? "No text" : reader.readToEnd());
}
}
} catch (UnsupportedDocumentFormatException ex) {
System.out.println("Isn't supported.");
}
}
}
To detect if image attachment is inline, disposition metadata is used. It takes inline or attachment values. The value is obtained by getMetadataValue method of ContainerItem class.
The following example shows how to detect inline attachments:
// Create an instance of Parser class
try (Parser parser = new Parser(Constants.InlineImages)) {
// Extract attachments from the container
Iterable<ContainerItem> attachments = parser.getContainer();
// Check if container extraction is supported
if (attachments == null) {
System.out.println("Container extraction isn't supported");
return;
}
// Iterate over attachments
for (ContainerItem item : attachments) {
// Check metadata for 'disposition' item
if ("inline".equals(item.getMetadataValue("disposition"))) {
// If it's 'inline' then print an item name
System.out.println(item.getName());
}
}
}
You may easily run the code above and see the feature in action in our GitHub examples:
Along with full featured Java library we provide simple, but powerful free Apps.
You are welcome to parse documents and extract data from PDF, DOC, DOCX, PPT, PPTX, XLS, XLSX, Emails and more with our free online Free Online Document Parser App.
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