org.apache.commons.mail.MultiPartEmail sends email with empty body

Question

Sending email org.apache.commons.mail.MultiPartEmail.send() sends email with empty body. I have tried with commons-email 1.2, 1.3.1, 1.3.3. Java 1.7.0_55 was the earliest version which caused the empty email body.

Answer 1

According to http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/7u55-relnotes-2177812.html#knownissues-7u55 After initialization of SAAJ components, the javax.mail library may fail to work under certain circumstances, which in turn could break the javax.mail's JAF setup. A possible workaround is to re-add the javax.mail handler before using javax.mail API:

MailcapCommandMap mailMap = (MailcapCommandMap) CommandMap.getDefaultCommandMap();
mailMap.
    addMailcap("multipart/mixed;;x-java-content-handler=com.sun.mail.handlers.multipart_mixed");"

Calling new AttachmentPartImpl(); is one of the certain circumstances.

In the application

com.sun.xml.internal.messaging.saaj.soap.MessageImpl.createAttachmentPart()

is called before sending the email. It does nothing else but return new AttachmentPartImpl(); which contains headers = new MimeHeaders(); Calling new MimeHeaders() was not enough for empty body to occur. Calling new AttachmentPartImpl(); before sending the mail resulted empty body. Re-adding the javax.mail handler before using javax.mail API solved the problem.

MultiPartEmail email = new MultiPartEmail();
email.setHostName(smtpServer);
email.addTo(to);
email.setFrom(from);
email.setSubject(subject);
email.setMsg(msg);
email.setSocketTimeout(20000);
email.setSocketConnectionTimeout(20000);
// SOAPMessage soapMessage = MessageFactory.newInstance().createMessage();
// soapMessage.createAttachmentPart(); // enough for empty body
new AttachmentPartImpl(); // enough for empty body
// new MimeHeaders(); not enough for empty body
email.send();