What is the best way to send an inline attachment?

Question and Answers
1

Hey guys, how u doing? I hope you are well.

I’m using the Node SDK (version 7.2.1), and I’m experiencing a problem:
What is the best way to send an inline attachment? Base64? Because in the docs I saw that it is sending the attachment ID, but how can I get an attachment ID if the attachments don’t have a POST endpoint?

2

Hi @VictorMonteiro7 - doing well, thanks for the message! How are you?

Nylas SDKs should support both formats: binary and base64, let me double check this with the team and circle back shortly :+1:

3

Hey @ram, thanks for the quickly reply. I’m doing well, thanks for asking.
Okay, I’ll wait.

1 Like
4

@VictorMonteiro7 taking a look at this and it seems we do not support base64 in the current SDK and are taking a look at this very soon.

Let me circle back when the Node SDK is updated to support this :+1:

5

Oh, that’s sad, but okay.
@ram I found another problem (I guess):
I’m trying to send a draft with attachments, but I can’t. When I send a message, it’s all ok (I do it with a single file less then 3MB, greater then 3MB, e multiple files). But, trying to send with a draft, when a file is less then 3MB, it send the email without the attachment, and, when the file has more then 3MB, it throws me an error NOT_IMPLEMENTED. Can you see this to me?

6

Hi @VictorMonteiro7 can you share a code snippet or code sample of how you are trying to send the attachments?

I see that files larger than 3MB require a different approaching to sending files, so have to double check if this is supported by the SDK (hence the message NOT_IMPLEMENTED may be relevant).

7

@ram
That’s the object when I do a GET to drafts endpoint:

{
    "starred": false,
    "unread": false,
    "folders": [
        "<Folder-ID>"
    ],
    "subject": "Test",
    "threadId": "<Thread-ID>",
    "grantId": "<Grant-ID>",
    "body": "<html><head>\r\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\"></head><body><a href=\"https://tracking.us.nylas.com/l/26f79d34b3cd47b19a7fe9c5f993e7ee/0/650703a23b560c8362b021b8705763d028302ea9d463eaae41c21169e96326dc?cache_buster=1713984436\">Um link para o Google!</a> Bem vindo!<img width=\"1\" height=\"1\" alt=\"tracking\" src=\"https://tracking.us.nylas.com/o/fbaaa90f23bf445592abbae71ffebb07/335ed8d7f95db559e7d2209bd832b91d8002af14aceaf4c49fd324507939a21a?cache_buster=1713984436\" style=\"border:0; width:1; height:1; display:none\"> </body></html>",
    "id": "<Draft-ID>",
    "object": "draft",
    "snippet": "Um link para o Google! Bem vindo!",
    "from": [
        {
            "email": "victormonteiro7@outlook.com"
        }
    ],
    "to": [
        {
            "name": "Victor",
            "email": "contato@ovictormonteiro.com"
        }
    ],
    "date": 1713984437,
    "createdAt": 1713984436,
    "updatedAt": 1713984437
}

I used the draft-id above to update the draft with the attachments

Image Greater Than 3MB

image-gt-3mb
image-gt-3mb1231×176 10 KB

I will send more images on next comments

1 Like
8

Image Less Than 3MB

image-lt-3MB
image-lt-3MB1654×697 293 KB

9

Multiple sizes

lt3mb-gt3mb
lt3mb-gt3mb1099×246 16.2 KB

Remembering:
All errors is only when I do it with Nylas.drafts.update function (or, when have only <3MB files, Nylas.drafts.send don’t send the attachment). When I send with Nylas.messages.send function, it works fine.

10

@VictorMonteiro7 thanks for sharing - let me circle back after the SDK is updated and try out the different image sizes :+1:

Just to clarify, the error occurs when:

  1. calling Nylas.drafts.update for file sizes larger than 3 MB
  2. calling Nylas.drafts.send for file sizes smaller than 3 MB
11

Yes. I would add one more:
3. Calling Nylas.drafts.update for multiple files with diferents sizes (larger than 3MB e less than 3MB).

12

@VictorMonteiro7 - still waiting on a resolution on this, I see you are reviewing the open PR, thanks!

13

Hey @ram, thanks for the response. I’ll be waiting for the resolution.

14

Hi @VictorMonteiro7 the PR is merged, let me know if there is anything else we can do to help!

15

Hey @ram, I saw this when they merged and version 7.4.0 arrived, but my biggest problem is: in Nylas v3 I’m sending inline attachments as base64, but gmail doesn’t accept base64 in the email body. In Nylas v2 there was a file post endpoint, so I sent the file and received the ID, and with that I changed the img src to cid:<file-id>, which is impossible to do in v3. How can I do this?

16

Hi @VictorMonteiro7 just checking some notes on this and Nylas API v3 does not have a file upload endpoint, only attaching files as part of email draft / send endpoints.

I see that gmail doesn’t accept base64, this may be something you need to implement for. I would try recommend you to consider what other formats or approaches you can consider for adding images to an email body.

17

Yep. I’ll appreciate that.

18

Hey @ram, I solved the problem.
The Nylas doesn’t have the POST /attachments endpoint anymore, but, I understood that I have to send the attachment with a generated ID and change the src on image.
So, instead use an endpoint to send an image, I just generated in our side an uuid and send the attachment with is_inline parameter.

1 Like
19

@ram @VictorMonteiro7
I tried using the /send endpoint with in_line parameters for attachments, but the email content is still not displaying as inline when sent to Outlook. Can you help me figure out what might be going wrong?

20

Hey @ritulg, which version are you using? Are you using some SDK? Can you send here how do you is sending the message?