Support sending Calendar event with API

[morki]

In our application, we need to send calendar events together with our emails. For now we are using Simple Java Mail to compose our messages and send with SMTP.

We would like to use Mox Web API to send those directly, but in API documentation there is no field for calendar part.

Here is nice structure compositor to see how to integrate calendar part into multipart message: https://www.simplejavamail.org/rfc-compliant.html#section-explore-multipart

I would like to propose addition to API:

type Message struct {
    //...
    ICalendar string
}

or maybe more generaly some AlternativeParts array with content type and body.

[mjl-]

Hi @morki! You should be able to add files to outgoing messages with the webapi. Either inline or as attachments. See the "Send" method, https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mjl-/[email protected]/webapi#Client.Send. The SendRequest has fields InlineFiles and AttachedFiles, see https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/mjl-/[email protected]/webapi#SendRequest. Instead of including the file data in the JSON request, you can also make a multipart/form-data request with form field(s) "inlinefile" and/or "attachedfile". The Client.Send docs have a curl example to make such a request.

I hope that's enough to make the webapi an option. If this isn't working or convenient, I'm interested in learning what the blocker is.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to add a field for this specific type of attachment. I can see how this is useful for this use case, but other use cases will likely follow. Also, I'm still working on calendaring support in mox. When that is ready, a higher-level API for composing + enqueuing messages with calendar events but be more helpful. I'm thinking about something like adding a "CalendarEvent" field to a SendRequest where you add a JSON object with start/end/title/location/etc fields, and an ICS file is composed and added to the message.

[morki]

Thank you very much for your response. I know about attachment support, but I think it is not the same. I will try to explain. When you attach files, it constructs different mime cascade as seen in this link:

https://www.simplejavamail.org/rfc-compliant.html#section-explore-multipart

But what I was looking for is this:

Where iCalendar event is just alternative part on the same level as HTML and plain text.

I think the future addition of CalendarEvent with specific fields, constructing the ICS automatically is super cool and will solve this, when it will be ready.

I look forward to calendaring/contact support in mox, it will be huge :)

[mjl-]

Thanks for the explanation, that makes sense. What if we add a new field AlternativeFiles []File, similar to the existing InlineFiles and AttachedFiles? Then you can add an ICS file as alternative, and other types of alternatives can be added too, e.g. a pdf/xml/json/richtext version of the message/data.

[morki]

Yeah, it will be awesome and more generic :)

[mjl-]

@morki The commit just now adds the AlternativeFiles field to the request body of the Send method. A form file field "alternativefile" will work as well. Similar to inline & attached files.
See https://www.xmox.nl/b/#6c488ead0b9ea8e11e5aff28b706121ee36d9401 for a binary with this commit, in case you want to give it a try.