cordova plugin email composer

Edit and send email messages

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Objective-C

Cordova Email Plugin

The plugin provides access to the standard interface that manages the editing and sending an email message. You can use this view controller to display a standard email view inside your application and populate the fields of that view with initial values, such as the subject, email recipients, body text, and attachments. The user can edit the initial contents you specify and choose to send the email or cancel the operation.

Using this interface does not guarantee immediate delivery of the corresponding email message. The user may cancel the creation of the message, and if the user does choose to send the message, the message is only queued in the Mail application outbox. This allows you to generate emails even in situations where the user does not have network access, such as in airplane mode. This interface does not provide a way for you to verify whether emails were actually sent.

Supported Platforms

Android
Browser
iOS
OSX
Windows

Installation

The plugin can be installed via Cordova-CLI and is publicly available on NPM.

Execute from the projects root folder:

$ cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-email-composer

Or install a specific version:

$ cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-email-composer@VERSION

Or install the latest master version:

$ cordova plugin add https://github.com/katzer/cordova-plugin-email-composer.git

Or install from local source:

$ cordova plugin add <path> --nofetch --nosave

Usage

The plugin creates the object cordova.plugins.email and is accessible after the deviceready event has been fired.

document.addEventListener('deviceready', function () {
    // cordova.plugins.email is now available
}, false);

All properties are optional. After opening the draft the user may have the possibilities to edit the draft from the UI. The callback comes without arguments.

cordova.plugins.email.open({
    from:       String, // sending email account (iOS only)
    to:          Array, // email addresses for TO field
    cc:          Array, // email addresses for CC field
    bcc:         Array, // email addresses for BCC field
    attachments: Array, // file paths or base64 data streams
    subject:    String, // subject of the email
    body:       String, // email body
    isHtml:    Boolean  // indicats if the body is HTML or plain text (primarily iOS)
}, callback, scope);

The following example shows how to create and show an email draft pre-filled with different kind of properties:

cordova.plugins.email.open({
    to:      '[email protected]',
    cc:      '[email protected]',
    bcc:     ['[email protected]', '[email protected]'],
    subject: 'Greetings',
    body:    'How are you? Nice greetings from Leipzig'
});

Of course its also possible to open a blank draft:

cordova.plugins.email.open();

Its possible to specify the email client. If the phone isn´t able to handle the specified scheme it will fallback to the system default:

cordova.plugins.email.open({ app: 'mailto', subject: 'Sent with mailto' });

On Android the app can be specified by either an alias or its package name. The alias gmail is available by default.

// Add app alias
cordova.plugins.email.addAlias('gmail', 'com.google.android.gm');

// Specify app by name or alias
cordova.plugins.email.open({ app: 'gmail', subject: 'Sent from Gmail' });

Issues with AndroidX

If you have issues with AndroidX, simply install the extra plugin

cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-androidx-adapter

For Ionic/Capacitor you can also try

npm install jetifier
npx jetify
npx cap sync android

HTML and CSS

Only the built-in email app for iOS does support HTML and CSS. Some Android clients support rich formatted text.

Use isHtml with caution! It’s disabled by default.

Attach Base64 encoded content

The code below shows how to attach an base64 encoded image which will be added as a image with the name icon.png.

cordova.plugins.email.open({
    subject:     'Cordova Icon',
    attachments: ['base64:icon.png//iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADwAAAA8CAYAAAA6...']
});

Attach files from the device storage

The path to the files must be defined absolute from the root of the file system. On Android the user has to allow the app first to read from external storage!

cordova.plugins.email.open({
    attachments: 'file:///storage/sdcard/icon.png', //=> storage/sdcard/icon.png (Android)
});

Attach native app resources

Each app has a resource folder, e.g. the res folder for Android apps or the Resource folder for iOS apps. The following example shows how to attach the app icon from within the app’s resource folder.

cordova.plugins.email.open({
    attachments: 'res://icon.png' //=> res/mipmap/icon (Android)
});

Attach assets from the www folder

The path to the files must be defined relative from the root of the mobile web app folder, which is located under the www folder.

cordova.plugins.email.open({
    attachments: [
        'file://img/logo.png', //=> assets/www/img/logo.png (Android)
        'file://css/index.css' //=> www/css/index.css (iOS)
    ]
});

Attach files from the internal app file system

The path must be defined relative from the directory holding application files.

cordova.plugins.email.open({
    attachments: [
        'app://databases/db.db3', //=> /data/data/<app.package>/databases/db.db3 (Android)
        'app://databases/db.db3', //=> /Applications/<AppName.app>/databases/db.db3 (iOS, OSX)
        'app://databases/db.db3', //=> ms-appdata:///databases/db.db3 (Windows)
    ]
});

Device Configuration

The email service is only available on devices which have configured an email account. On Android the user has to allow the app first to access account informations.

cordova.plugins.email.hasAccount(callbackFn);

To check for a specific mail client, just pass its uri scheme on iOS, or the package name on Android as first parameter:

cordova.plugins.email.hasClient('gmail', callbackFn);

For Android only, it’s possible to get a list of all installed email clients:

cordova.plugins.email.getClients(function (apps) {
    cordova.plugins.email.open({ app: apps[0] });    
});

Permissions

Some functions require permissions on Android. The plugin itself does not add them to the manifest nor does it ask for by itself at runtime.

Permission	Description
`cordova.plugins.email.permission.READ_EXTERNAL_STORAGE`	Is needed to attach external files `file:///` located outside of the app’s own file system.
`cordova.plugins.email.permission.GET_ACCOUNTS`	Without the permission the `hasAccount()` function wont be able to look for email accounts.

To check if a permission has been granted:

cordova.plugins.email.hasPermission(permission, callbackFn);

To request a permission:

cordova.plugins.email.requestPermission(permission, callbackFn);

Note: The author of the app has to make sure that the permission is listed in the manifest.

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request

License

This software is released under the Apache 2.0 License.

Made with 😋 from Leipzig