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Summary
Create, extract, encode or decode messages.
Description
The Action property controls the state of the MIME ActiveX control. A file can be
encoded or decoded by assigning one of the following values to this property. A message
can be created or extracted using this property but these values have been deprecated, and
the CreateMessage, ExtractMessageStart, ExtractMessageData and ExtractMessageEnd methods
should be used instead
| Value |
Meaning |
| ACTION_ABORT |
Abort create message. |
| ACTION_UUENCODE |
Encode using Uuencode format. |
| ACTION_UUDECODE |
Decode using Uudecode format. |
| ACTION_BASE64_ENCODE |
Encode using Base64 format. |
| ACTION_BASE64_DECODE |
Decode using Base64 format. |
| ACTION_QUOTED_ENCODE |
Encode using Quoted-Printable format. |
| ACTION_QUOTED_DECODE |
Decode using Quoted-Printable format. |
| ACTION_BINHEX_ENCODE |
Encode using BinHex format. |
| ACTION_BINHEX_DECODE |
Decode using BinHex format. |
| ACTION_CREATE |
Create message. This Value has been deprecated. |
| ACTION_CREATE_X |
Create message and upcall with data. This value has been deprecated |
| ACTION_EXTRACT |
Extract message. This value has been deprecated |
This property can be changed at run time only.
Before setting the Action property to ACTION_CREATE, the following properties must be
initialized. The To property must be set to the mailing address (mail message) or the news
group names (news article) of the recipients. The From property must be set to the mailing
address of the sender. The Subject, Cc and Bcc properties are optional parameters and can
be left as empty strings. The IsMime and IsNews property must be set correctly. Plain
messages can be plain text or uuencoded. MIME messages can be base64 encoded,
quoted-printable encoded or plain text. The encoding is done by the MIME ActiveX control.
For MIME messages, apart from the above the ContentId, ContentType, Subtype and Charset
(optional) have to be set before creating the message. The MessageType property must be
set for partial or external MIME messages. The Destination property must be set to the
destination file name. The OnInformation, OnHeader and OnBody events will be fired to
obtain the message header and body as well as any attachments. Once the header and body of
the message is composed, the OnStatistics event is fired with the number of lines and
number of bytes in the header and body of the message. For partial messages, the OnPartial
event will be fired to obtain the part number and id and for external messages, the
OnExternal event will be fired to obtain the access type and other pertaining information.
Please check the reference page of the individual properties for more information.
An application that cannot handle file i/o should use the ACTION_CREATE_X action to
create the message. All the other properties except the destination filename needed for
ACTION_CREATE must be initialized before setting the action. It is similar to
ACTION_CREATE action, only at the end the OnData event will be fired one or more times to
deliver the created message to the application
To abort the create or extract message, set the Action property to ACTION_ABORT during
the OnInformation, OnHeader, OnBody, OnStatistics, OnSetHeader, OnSetBody, OnSetBodyB,
OnRecvAddrField, OnRecvHeader, OnRecvBody or OnRecvBodyB events. The action in progress
will be canceled and no further such events will occur.
To extract a message, set the Action property to ACTION_EXTRACT with the Source and
Destination properties set to the source file and the destination directory. The message
header and body are extracted first and saved in the destination directory. The OnExtract
event will be fired to inform the application about the filename, encoding type, content
type, subtype and level. The FileName, Encoding, ContentType and Subtype properties will
be set with the appropriate values before the OnExtract event is fired. If there are any
attachments, they will be extracted and the OnExtract event will contain the information.
All encoded files will be decoded and then saved. For Partial messages, the OnExtract
message will be fired only when all the parts of the message have been extracted and
reassembled.
To UUencode a file, set the Action property to ACTION_UUENCODE with the Source and
Destination properties set. The FileName property must be set to the name that will be
used during encoding. This is necessary to preserve the original name of the file during
the decoding process at the receiving end. The number of lines in the encoded file is
returned in the Lines property after the encoding. If the Destination property is an empty
string, then the encoded output is not generated but the Lines property will contain the
number of lines in the encoded file. This information is necessary while building the
header for a uuencoded message.
To UUdecode a file, set the Action property to ACTION_UUDECODE with the Source and
Destination properties set. Once the file has been decoded, the FileName property will
contain the name of the original file used during the UUencode process. The application
may want to rename the decoded file to its original name.
MIME messages have three encoding formats: Base64, BinHex and Quoted-printable. The
Base64 encoding format is widely used. The quoted-printable encoding is used when the file
is mostly ASCII characters but also contains special characters or very long lines. The
BinHex encoding is a popular means of encoding Macintosh files for transmission via
internet mail. The Source and Destination properties must be set for these encoding and
decoding formats. For BinHex encoding and decoding the BinHexCreator, BinHexResource,
BinHexType and BinHexFlag properties are also used.
To encode using base64 format, set Action property to ACTION_BASE64_ENCODE and to
decode a base64 encoded file, set the Action property to ACTION_BASE64_DECODE. To encode
using quoted-printable format, set Action property to ACTION_QUOTED_ENCODE and to decode a
quoted-printable encoded file, set the Action property to ACTION_QUOTED_DECODE.
To encode using BinHex format, set Action property to ACTION_BINHEX_ENCODE and to
decode a BinHex encoded file, set the Action property to ACTION_BINHEX_DECODE. Before
setting the Action property the following properties must be set: Destination, Source and
Filename. The BinHexCreator, BinHexFlag, BinHexResource and BinHexType may be set by the
application before encoding or the default values of these properties will be used. These
properties will be set by the MIME ActiveX control after the file has been decoded
If an error occurs, then the OnError event will be fired. The application should set a
flag in the OnError event, so that it can determine if the action was successful. In
addition, the application may want to display an error message in the OnError event to
inform the user of the error. Please check the reference page of the OnError event for a
complete listing of error codes.
The Abort, Create, CreateX, Extract, UUencode, UUdecode, Base64Encode, Base64Decode,
QuotedEncode, QuotedDecode, BinHexEncode and BinHexDecode methods accomplish the same as
the above actions. The Create, CreateX and Extract methods have been deprecated, and the
CreateMessage, ExtractMessageStart, ExtractMessageData and ExtractMessageEnd methods
should be used instead. Please check the reference pages of these methods for more
detailed information on their usage.
There is no default value for the Action property.
Example
Mime.Destination = "c:\temp\test.msg"
Mime.Source = "c:\temp\testfile.txt"
Mime.Action = ACTION_BASE64_ENCODE
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