Save email message as eml using C# in Lotus Notes

Question

I need to export (save to) hard drive my Lotus Notes emails. I figured out the way how to save attachments to HDD, but I can't figure out the way of how to save the whole email.

The code below shows how I export attachments. Can you suggest how can I modify it to save emails? PS- I am new to programming.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using Domino;
using System.Collections;

namespace ExportLotusAttachments
{
  class Class1
  {
    public void ScanForEmails()
    {
      String textBox1 = "c:\\1";
      NotesSession session = new NotesSession();
      session.Initialize("");
      NotesDbDirectory dir = null;
      dir = session.GetDbDirectory("");
      NotesDatabase db = null;
      db = dir.OpenMailDatabase();
      NotesDatabase NDb = dir.OpenMailDatabase(); //Database connection

      //ArrayList that will hold names of the folders
      ArrayList LotusViews2 = new ArrayList(); 

      foreach (NotesView V in NDb.Views)
      {
        if (V.IsFolder && !(V.Name.Equals("($All)")))
        {
          NotesView getS = V;
          LotusViews2.Add(getS.Name);
        }
      }

      foreach (String obj in LotusViews2)
      {
        NotesDocument NDoc;
        NotesView nInboxDocs = NDb.GetView(obj);
        NDoc = nInboxDocs.GetFirstDocument();
        String pAttachment;

        while (NDoc != null)
        {
          if (NDoc.HasEmbedded && NDoc.HasItem("$File"))
          {
            object[] AllDocItems = (object[])NDoc.Items;
            foreach (object CurItem in AllDocItems)
            {
              NotesItem nItem = (NotesItem)CurItem;
              if (IT_TYPE.ATTACHMENT == nItem.type)
              {
                String path = textBox1;
                pAttachment = ((object[])nItem.Values)[0].ToString();

                if (!System.IO.Directory.Exists(path))
                {
                  System.IO.Directory.CreateDirectory(textBox1);
                }

                try
                {
                  NDoc.GetAttachment(pAttachment).ExtractFile(@path + pAttachment);
                }
                catch { }
              }
            }
          }
          NDoc = nInboxDocs.GetNextDocument(NDoc);
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Answer 1

This post by Bob Babalan explains how to export lotus documents using Java. The same principle should work in C# or VB. The document is cnverted into MIME and written to the disk.

Or in version 8.5.3 (I think it started witn 8.5.1) you can just drag and drop it from the mail file to the file system.

Answer 2

I know it is a bit late, but this is, what I did. (Based on Bob Babalan) Bobs Solution helped me alot to understand NotesMIMEEntities, but in his solution, he only traversed the MIME-Tree to the second "layer". This will traverse multiple layers.

public static void GetMIME(StreamWriter writer, NotesMIMEEntity mimeEntity)
{
    try
    {
        string contentType = null;
        string headers = null;
        string content = null;
        string preamble = null;
        MIME_ENCODING encoding;

        contentType = mimeEntity.ContentType;
        headers = mimeEntity.Headers;
        encoding = mimeEntity.Encoding;

        // message envelope. If no MIME-Version header, add one
        if (!headers.Contains("MIME-Version:"))
            writer.WriteLine("MIME-Version: 1.0");
        writer.WriteLine(headers);

        // for multipart, usually no main-msg content...
        content = mimeEntity.ContentAsText;
        if (content != null && content.Trim().Length > 0)
            writer.WriteLine(content);
        writer.Flush();

        if (contentType.StartsWith("multipart"))
        {
            preamble = mimeEntity.Preamble;
            NotesMIMEEntity mimeChild = mimeEntity.GetFirstChildEntity();

            while (mimeChild != null)
            {
                GetMimeChild(writer, mimeChild);
                mimeChild = mimeChild.GetNextSibling();
            }
        }

        writer.WriteLine(mimeEntity.BoundaryEnd);
        writer.Flush();
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Logging.Log(ex.ToString());
    }
} 

private void GetMimeChild(StreamWriter writer, NotesMIMEEntity mimeEntity)
{
    string contentType = null;
    string headers = null;
    string content = null;
    string preamble = null;
    MIME_ENCODING encoding;

    contentType = mimeEntity.ContentType;
    headers = mimeEntity.Headers;
    encoding = mimeEntity.Encoding;

    if (encoding == MIME_ENCODING.ENC_IDENTITY_BINARY)
    {
        mimeEntity.EncodeContent(MIME_ENCODING.ENC_BASE64);
        headers = mimeEntity.Headers;
    }

    preamble = mimeEntity.Preamble;
    writer.Write(mimeEntity.BoundaryStart);

    if (!content.EndsWith("\n"))
        writer.WriteLine("");

    writer.WriteLine(headers);
    writer.WriteLine();

    writer.Write(mimeEntity.ContentAsText);

    if (contentType.StartsWith("multipart"))
    {
        preamble = mimeEntity.Preamble;
        NotesMIMEEntity mimeChild = mimeEntity.GetFirstChildEntity();

        while (mimeChild != null)
        {
            GetMimeChild(writer, mimeChild);
            mimeChild = mimeChild.GetNextSibling();
        }
    }

    writer.Write(mimeEntity.BoundaryEnd);
    writer.Flush();
}

I would call this methods like this, to save the EML-File to a given path.

using (FileStream fs = new FileStream (path,FileMode.Create,FileAccess.ReadWrite,FileShare.None))
{
  using (StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(fs))
  {
    NotesMimeEntity mimeEntity = notesDocument.GetMIMEEntity();
    if (mimeEntity != null)
        GetMIME(writer, mimeEntity);
  }
}