How to pass a camera image to mail as an attachment. (Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Phonegap)

Question

I am developing an app for my work (social housing) and I want it to be able to allow the user to take a photo and attach it to an email so they can send it to us (pictures of repairs etc)

I'm using Phonegap and Eclipse as I want the app to be cross platform but am testing in Android primarily at the moment. Is there a way to do this? I am currently using the code below with no avail.

      <script typr="text/javascript" charset="utf-8">

    function camera()
    {
        navigator.camera.getPicture(onSuccess, onFail, { quality: 20,
            destinationType: Camera.DestinationType.DATA_URL
         }); 

        function onSuccess(imageData) {
            var image = document.getElementById('image');
            var data = "data:image/jpeg;base64," + imageData;

            var link = "mailto:johnsmith@gmail.com?body="+data+"&subject=john smith";

            window.location.href = link;
        }

        function onFail(message) {
            alert('Failed because: ' + message);
        }

    }
    </script>

So far I've tried passing the data through to the mail app using the mailto: &attachment method but that never attaches an image (most mail apps treat this as a security hole). Then I tried to embed the base64 code of the image in the body of the email (as shown above). Unfortunately the base64 just displays as plain text and makes mail unresponsive. I've also tried using the image URI instead of the Base64 method in Phonegap but that throws an 'image.URI is not defined' error in my logcat.

Is this possible? I know I can use intents for just android as detailed in another question here but this won't work on iOS etc.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT 02/12/2012

What I'm trying to achieve here is the same functionality you get in the native Android gallery/camera app. After you take a picture you have share options, one of which is mail. If you chose to share via mail the image is passed to the mail app as an attachment. Is there any way I can implement this same functionality in my app?

Answer 1

So it looks like there is no 'one size fits all' solution for this problem.

The mailto: method just doesn't pass attachments in most modern mail apps as it's seen as a security risk. So regardless of whether its an imageURI or a base64 encoded image, mailto: just won't work. The passing of 'subject' and 'body' works well though for anyone that wants to use the above code for pre-filling in an email with no attachments.

After posing this question elsewhere it looks like I'll need to use a phonegap plugin (emailComposer for iOS and WebIntent for Android) in order to pass an image sucessfully to a mail app from my phonegap app.

Thanks.

Answer 2

use this JAVA code to send Email with photo and text.

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.OutputStream;
import java.security.Security;
import java.util.Properties;

import javax.activation.DataHandler;
import javax.activation.DataSource;
import javax.activation.FileDataSource;
import javax.mail.Message;
import javax.mail.Multipart;
import javax.mail.PasswordAuthentication;
import javax.mail.Session;
import javax.mail.Transport;
import javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeBodyPart;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage;
import javax.mail.internet.MimeMultipart;

public class GMailSender extends javax.mail.Authenticator {
    private String mailhost = "smtp.gmail.com";
    private String user;
    private String password;
    private Session session;

    static {
        Security.addProvider(new JSSEProvider());
    }

    public GMailSender(String user, String password) {
        this.user = user;
        this.password = password;

        Properties props = new Properties();
        props.setProperty("mail.transport.protocol", "smtp");
        props.setProperty("mail.host", mailhost);
        props.put("mail.smtp.auth", "true");
        props.put("mail.smtp.port", "465");
        props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.port", "465");
        props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.class", "javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory");
        props.put("mail.smtp.socketFactory.fallback", "false");
        props.setProperty("mail.smtp.quitwait", "false");

        session = Session.getDefaultInstance(props, this);
    }

    protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
        return new PasswordAuthentication(user, password);
    }

    public synchronized void sendMail(String subject, String body, String sender, String recipients) throws Exception {
        try {
            MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(session);
            DataHandler handler = new DataHandler(new ByteArrayDataSource(body.getBytes(), "text/plain"));
            message.setSender(new InternetAddress(sender));
            message.setSubject(subject);
            message.setDataHandler(handler);
            if (recipients.indexOf(',') > 0)
                message.setRecipients(Message.RecipientType.TO, InternetAddress.parse(recipients));
            else
                message.setRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress(recipients));
            Transport.send(message);
        } catch (Exception e) {

        }
    }

    public synchronized void sendMail(String subject, String body, String senderEmail, String recipients, String filePath,String logFilePath) throws Exception {
        boolean fileExists = new File(filePath).exists();
        if (fileExists) {

            String from = senderEmail;
            String to = recipients;
            String fileAttachment = filePath;

            // Define message
            MimeMessage message = new MimeMessage(session);
            message.setFrom(new InternetAddress(from));
            message.addRecipient(Message.RecipientType.TO, new InternetAddress(to));
            message.setSubject(subject);

            // create the message part
            MimeBodyPart messageBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();

            // fill message
            messageBodyPart.setText(body);

            Multipart multipart = new MimeMultipart();
            multipart.addBodyPart(messageBodyPart);

            // Part two is attachment
            messageBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();
            DataSource source = new FileDataSource(fileAttachment);
            messageBodyPart.setDataHandler(new DataHandler(source));
            messageBodyPart.setFileName("screenShoot.jpg");
            multipart.addBodyPart(messageBodyPart);


            //part three for logs
            messageBodyPart = new MimeBodyPart();
            DataSource sourceb = new FileDataSource(logFilePath);
            messageBodyPart.setDataHandler(new DataHandler(sourceb));
            messageBodyPart.setFileName("logs.txt");
            multipart.addBodyPart(messageBodyPart);


            // Put parts in message
            message.setContent(multipart);

            // Send the message
            Transport.send(message);
        }else{
            sendMail( subject, body,  senderEmail,  recipients);
        }
    }

    public class ByteArrayDataSource implements DataSource {
        private byte[] data;
        private String type;

        public ByteArrayDataSource(byte[] data, String type) {
            super();
            this.data = data;
            this.type = type;
        }

        public ByteArrayDataSource(byte[] data) {
            super();
            this.data = data;
        }

        public void setType(String type) {
            this.type = type;
        }

        public String getContentType() {
            if (type == null)
                return "application/octet-stream";
            else
                return type;
        }

        public InputStream getInputStream() throws IOException {
            return new ByteArrayInputStream(data);
        }

        public String getName() {
            return "ByteArrayDataSource";
        }

        public OutputStream getOutputStream() throws IOException {
            throw new IOException("Not Supported");
        }
    }
}