System.Web.Mail.MailMessage Headers.Add - Include vbCrLf

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travispennington

To anyone that can assist me: I deeply appreciate your help!!

I am developing an application with an outside vendor. The vendor has
a very odd requirement. They need custom X-Headers added to an email
received by their system. That's not the odd part. The oddity is
they want to have a single X-Header containing multiple keys and
values that are delimited by a carriage return, line feed and tab.

The vendor claims other customers have successfully met this
requirement using Lotus Notes.

Here's a snippet of code that attempts this requirement:
Dim objMail As New System.Web.Mail.MailMessage
objMail.To = strToAddress
objMail.From = strFromAddress
objMail.Subject = "test"
System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "smtp_svr_1"
objMail.Headers.Add("X-Custom-Header", "key1: value1" & vbCrLf & vbTab
& "key2: value2")

When the email is received, this is where I fail the requirement. My
header looks like this:
X-Custom-Header: key1: value1 key2: value2

The vendor says that my header should look like this:
X-Custom-Header: key1: value1
key2: value2

In other words, they say the vbCrLf should wrap the text inside the
header to a new line and then tab once. Although I have attempted
numerous ways to insert the carriage return line feed, it always
renders on a single line in the header. I've also tried using
Environment.NewLine() with no success.

Is this even possible? My gut tells me no, but I'm hoping someone out
there will be able to say "yes it's possible" and show me how.

Thank you kindly for your time,
Travis
 
I am not sure if you can do it or not with System.Web.Mail but this is
deffintly a bug on the vendors side.

X-Custom-Header: key1: value1 key2: value2

is equivelent to

X-Custom-Header: key1: value1
key2: value2

The line break (a.ka. folding) is a layer of RFC822 which is a way to get
around line length limitations. They are misusing the RFC because their
parsing developer(s) are to lazy to write a better parser.

If you can't do it, and the vendor is not going to budge you may want to
give the below component a try. I belive the headers are added untouched.
http://www.freesmtp.net

They should have copied the Received header symantics and use a semi-colon
instead.

i.e.

X-Custom-Header: Key1:Value;Key2:Value2

or just the below line where key is implicit.

X-Custom-Header: Value1;Value2
 
To anyone that can assist me: I deeply appreciate your help!!

I am developing an application with an outside vendor. The vendor has
a very odd requirement. They need custom X-Headers added to an email
received by their system. That's not the odd part. The oddity is
they want to have a single X-Header containing multiple keys and
values that are delimited by a carriage return, line feed and tab.

The vendor claims other customers have successfully met this
requirement using Lotus Notes.

Here's a snippet of code that attempts this requirement:
Dim objMail As New System.Web.Mail.MailMessage
objMail.To = strToAddress
objMail.From = strFromAddress
objMail.Subject = "test"
System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "smtp_svr_1"
objMail.Headers.Add("X-Custom-Header", "key1: value1" & vbCrLf & vbTab
& "key2: value2")

When the email is received, this is where I fail the requirement. My
header looks like this:
X-Custom-Header: key1: value1 key2: value2

The vendor says that my header should look like this:
X-Custom-Header: key1: value1
key2: value2

In other words, they say the vbCrLf should wrap the text inside the
header to a new line and then tab once. Although I have attempted
numerous ways to insert the carriage return line feed, it always
renders on a single line in the header. I've also tried using
Environment.NewLine() with no success.

Is this even possible? My gut tells me no, but I'm hoping someone out
there will be able to say "yes it's possible" and show me how.

Thank you kindly for your time,
Travis
Click to expand...

try to add "\r\n" into line: "key1: value1\r\nkey2: value2"
 
Alexey,

Thanks for trying to help. Unfortunately, the \r\n ends up being part
of the same line and actually displays as part of a string. It looks
like:
"key1: value1\r\nkey2: value2"

Any other thoughts?
 
Just a wild guess..

Would this work?:

objMail.Headers.Add("X-Custom-Header", "key1: value1" & vbCrLf )
objMail.Headers.Add("", "vbTab & "key2: value2")
 
Bill, thanks for the attempt. There's a problem with that approach
when I have more than 2 value key pairs. The header's key name has
to be unique. For example, I can't have 2 of these:
objMail.Headers.Add("", bla bla)
The header key has be unique and their application is looking for a
tab on the new line too.
 
Alexey,

Thanks for trying to help. Unfortunately, the \r\n ends up being part
of the same line and actually displays as part of a string. It looks
like:
"key1: value1\r\nkey2: value2"

Any other thoughts?
Click to expand...

I read that this works with some clients like Eudora, but I see that
this is not the case with Outlook, or Gmail... How did you test it?
Have you ever saw the line breaks from a Lotus Notes message?
 
I have been sending my test messages to a SmarterTools web based email
account. I'm not viewing the header with a PC based email client.
The vendor sent me a message generated from their system (Lotus Notes)
to my same SmarterTools web email....and it's header had the line
breaks displaying the way they want it. They even sent me a snippet
of code demonstrating how they accomplish it in Lotus Notes, but it's
the same thing I'm doing....they're just inserting vbCrLf into a
header. Of course, the creation/attachment of the header is slightly
different for Lotus, but everything else is the same.
 
Bob, thanks for the referral on freesmtp.net. I'll check that out.
I agree about the RFC too. I haven't personally read the RFC myself,
but monkeying around with the formatting (appearance) didn't set well
with me either.
 
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