Products.MIMETools 4.0

Products.MIMETools

Currently, the MIMETools product’s only function is to provide the <dtml-mime> DTML tag for the DocumentTemplate distribution.

The <dtml-mime> tag is used to construct MIME containers. The syntax of the <dtml-mime> tag is:

<dtml-mime type="x" disposition="y" encode="z">
Contents of first part
<dtml-boundary type="x" disposition="y" encode="z">
Contents of second part
<dtml-boundary type="x" disposition="y" encode="z">
Contents of nth part
</dtml-mime>

The area of data between tags, called a block, is encoded into whatever is specified with the ‘encode’ tag attribute for that block. If no encoding is specified, ‘base64’ is defaulted. Valid encoding options include ‘base64’, ‘quoted-printable’ and ‘7bit’ . If the ‘encode’ attribute is set to ‘7bit’ no encoding is done on the block and the data is assumed to be in a valid MIME format.

If the ‘disposition’ attribute is not specified for a certain block, then the ‘Content-Disposition:’ MIME header is not included in that block’s MIME part.

The entire MIME container, from the opening mime tag to the closing, has it’s ‘Content-Type:’ MIME header set to ‘multipart/mixed’.

For example, the following DTML:

<dtml-mime encode="7bit" type="text/plain">
This is the first part.
<dtml-boundary encode="base64" type="text/plain">
This is the second.
</dtml-mime>

Is rendered to the following text:

Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
    boundary="216.164.72.30.501.1550.923070182.795.22531"

--216.164.72.30.501.1550.923070182.795.22531
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

This is the first part.

--216.164.72.30.501.1550.923070182.795.22531
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64

VGhpcyBpcyB0aGUgc2Vjb25kLgo=

--216.164.72.30.501.1550.923070182.795.22531--

The dtml-mime tag is particularly handy in conjunction with the dtml-sendmail tag. This allows Zope to send attachments along with email. Here is an example.

Create a DTML method called ‘input’ with the following code:

<dtml-var standard_html_header>
<form method="post" action="send" ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data">
<input type="file" name="afile"><br>
Send to:<input type="textbox" name="who"/><br/>
<input type="submit" value="Send"/>
</form>
<dtml-var standard_html_footer>

Create another DTML Method called ‘send’ with the following code:

<dtml-var standard_html_header>
<dtml-sendmail smtphost="localhost">
From: michel@digicool.com
To: <dtml-var who>
<dtml-mime type="text/plain" encode="7bit">

Hi <dtml-var who>, someone sent you this attachment.

<dtml-boundary type="application/octet-stream" disposition="attachment"
encode="base64"><dtml-var "afile.read()"></dtml-mime>

</dtml-sendmail>

Mail with attachment was sent.
<dtml-var standard_html_footer>

Notice that there is no blank line between the ‘To:’ header and the starting dtml-mime tag. If a blank line is inserted between them then the message will not be interpreted as multipart by the receiving mail reader.

Also notice that there is no newline between the dtml-boundary tag and the dtml-var tag, or the end of the dtml-var tag and the closing dtml-mime tag. This is important, if you break the tags up with newlines then they will be encoded and included in the MIME part, which is probably not what you want.

As per the MIME spec, dtml-mime tags may be nested within dtml-mime tags arbitrarily.

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