How to send email with attachments in SharePoint 2013?

Question

I am using SharePoint 2013 to implement a custom workflow application.

During one of the state transitions, I want to send an email to people who are part of a certain group with a zip file of documents uploaded in last 5 days.

However, I am not sure what is the best way to send attachments in SharePoint. I could not find if it's supported by the API itself:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sharepoint.utilities.sputility.sendemail.aspx

Please suggest what would be a recommended way.

Answer 1

SPUtility.SendEmail doesn't support sending attachments you will need to use the classes in the System.Net.Mail namespace.

Below is an example of how to do this, it is not functional as you will need to provide additional code to load your zip file as an SPFile object in order to call the OpenBinaryStream() method (or provide some other way of opening the zip file as a Stream). Also it will need additional error checking and such.

using(SPSite site = new SPSite("http://siteurl"))
{
  using(SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
   {
       // Check there is an email server configured
        if (SPUtility.IsEmailServerSet(web)) 
        {
            // Get the web app so we can get the email server SP is configured to use
            SPWebApplication webApp = web.Site.WebApplication; 

            // Get the mail server details
            string smtpServerAddress = webApp.OutboundMailServiceInstance.Server.Address;
            string fromAddress = webApp.OutboundMailSenderAddress;

            var email = new MailMessage();
            email.From = new MailAddress(fromAddress);

            // Your code to load the zip file as an SPFile              

            Stream contentStream = spFile.OpenBinaryStream();
            var attachment = new Attachment(contentStream, spFile.Name);
            email.Attachments.Add(attachment);

            email.Subject = "Your email subject";
            email.Body = "Your email body text";

            // Set up the mail server and sent the email
            SmtpClient mailServer = new SmtpClient(smtpServerAddress);
            mailServer.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;
            mailServer.Send(email);
        }
   }
}

Answer 2

This should work:

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://website.com/sites/site"))
{
    using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
    {
        System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();
        System.IO.StreamWriter writer = new System.IO.StreamWriter(ms);
        writer.Write("Hello its my sample file");
        writer.Write(Environment.NewLine);
        writer.Write(Environment.NewLine);
        writer.Write("Hello its my sample file");
        writer.Flush();

        SPWebApplication webApp = web.Site.WebApplication;
        string smtpServerAddress = webApp.OutboundMailServiceInstance.Server.Address;
        string fromAddress = webApp.OutboundMailSenderAddress;

        ms.Position = 0;     // read from the start of what was written             

        System.Net.Mime.ContentType ct = new System.Net.Mime.ContentType(System.Net.Mime.MediaTypeNames.Text.Plain);

        MailMessage email = new MailMessage();
        email.From = new MailAddress(fromAddress);
        email.To.Add("[email protected]");           

        email.Attachments.Add(new Attachment(ms, "myfile.txt", "text/txt"));
        email.Subject = "Your email subject";
        email.Body = "Your email body text";

        // Set up the mail server and sent the email
        SmtpClient mailServer = new SmtpClient(smtpServerAddress);
        mailServer.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;
        mailServer.Send(email);

        writer.Dispose();
        ms.Close();
    }
}