How can I save an email instead of sending when using SmtpClient?

Question

I am using SmtpClient to send an email with an attachment. However for a certain batch we need to somehow save the MailMessage instead of sending them. We are then thinking/hoping to manually upload the messages to the users drafts folder.

Is it possible to save these messages with the attachment intact (impossible, I would have thought). Or alternatively upload the messages to a folder in the users account?

If anyone has any experience of this, I'd much appreciate a bit of help or a pointer.

score 82 · Accepted Answer · edited May 08 '15 at 22:30

82

When testing in ASP.NET we save our emails to a folder rather then send them through an email server. Maybe you could change yourweb.config settings like this for your batch?

<system.net>
  <mailSettings>
    <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
      <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\Temp\mail\"/>
    </smtp>
  </mailSettings>
</system.net>

Additional Info:

edited May 08 '15 at 22:30

Alexander

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answered Feb 19 '09 at 23:57

Leah

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Thanks worked a treat. Also Avram (see below) posted a useful link which discusses changing the email message name from the auto generated GUID to your own value. – user17510 Feb 20 '09 at 00:57
I have tried this method, and I get an error that a "From" address is not specified. Is there a way to specify this for SpecifiedPickupDirectory in web.config? When you do network settings there is – codeMonkey Jan 19 '18 at 19:01

Chris S · Answer 2 · 2012-12-08T16:34:57.353

As well as the SpecifiedPickupDirectory information of the other answers, if you want to ensure your emails are sent to a folder relative to the site root - handy in testing on build servers where you don't know the paths - you can add a quick check in your email sending code:

    SmtpClient client = new SmtpClient();
    ...

    // Add "~" support for pickupdirectories.
    if (client.DeliveryMethod == SmtpDeliveryMethod.SpecifiedPickupDirectory && client.PickupDirectoryLocation.StartsWith("~"))
    {
        string root = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory;
        string pickupRoot = client.PickupDirectoryLocation.Replace("~/", root);
        pickupRoot = pickupRoot.Replace("/",@"\");
        client.PickupDirectoryLocation = pickupRoot;
    }

And your tests will look something like this (make sure you use App_Data so IIS can write to the folder):

    // Arrange - get SitePath from AppDomain.Current.BaseDirectory + ..\
    string pickupPath = Path.Combine(SitePath, "App_Data", "TempSmtp");
    if (!Directory.Exists(pickupPath))
        Directory.CreateDirectory(pickupPath);

    foreach (string file in Directory.GetFiles(pickupPath, "*.eml"))
    {
        File.Delete(file);
    }

    // Act (send some emails)

    // Assert
    Assert.That(Directory.GetFiles(pickupPath, "*.eml").Count(), Is.EqualTo(1));

Avram · Answer 3 · 2014-01-17T23:52:57.457

7

This can help - Adding Save() functionality to Microsoft.Net.Mail.MailMessage
The main ideia, make an extension to MailMessage ,that by reflection making a save method.

edited Jan 17 '14 at 23:52

answered Feb 20 '09 at 00:14

Avram

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Thanks, it will be interesting to see whether I can add attachments here too. – user17510 Feb 20 '09 at 00:42

score 6 · Answer 4 · edited Apr 15 '15 at 17:46

You can configure this with the system.net setting in your web.config / app.config file.

<system.net>
  <mailSettings>
    <smtp deliveryMethod="Network">
      <network host="mail.mydomain.com" port="25" />
    </smtp>
    <!-- Use this setting for development
    <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
      <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="C:\Temp" />
    </smtp>
    -->
  </mailSettings>
</system.net>

Also, here's a link with info on migrating from System.Web.Mail to System.Net.Mail.

score 1 · Answer 5 · edited May 30 '18 at 07:59

1

A bug also requires adding as a workaround in some versions of the framework. So the completed version looks like:

<system.net>
  <mailSettings>
    <smtp deliveryMethod="SpecifiedPickupDirectory">
        <specifiedPickupDirectory pickupDirectoryLocation="c:\Temp\mail\"/>
        <network host="localhost" />
    </smtp>
  </mailSettings>
</system.net>

edited May 30 '18 at 07:59

Frederik Struck-Schøning

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answered Sep 12 '14 at 20:20

devjin

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How can I save an email instead of sending when using SmtpClient?

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