How to send multi-part MIME messages in c#?

Question

I want to send multi-part MIME messages with an HTML component plus a plain text component for people whose email clients can't handle HTML. The System.Net.Mail.MailMessage class doesn't appear to support this. How do you do it?

Answer 1

D'oh, this is really simple... but I'll leave the answer here for anyone who, like me, came looking on SO for the answer before Googling... :)

Credit to this article.

Use AlternateViews, like so:

//create the mail message var mail = new MailMessage();  //set the addresses mail.From = new MailAddress("[email protected]"); mail.To.Add("[email protected]");  //set the content mail.Subject = "This is an email";  //first we create the Plain Text part var plainView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString("This is my plain text content, viewable by those clients that don't support html", null, "text/plain"); //then we create the Html part var htmlView = AlternateView.CreateAlternateViewFromString("<b>this is bold text, and viewable by those mail clients that support html</b>", null, "text/html"); mail.AlternateViews.Add(plainView); mail.AlternateViews.Add(htmlView);  //send the message var smtp = new SmtpClient("127.0.0.1"); //specify the mail server address smtp.Send(mail);