In Chatwoot, we rely on the Content-ID for inline attachments to replace
the link with the uploaded attachment URL. Our expectation was that only
images would be inline, while other attachments would not. However,
email clients like Apple Mail (sigh) allow users to send inline
attachments that are not images, and these attachments often lack a
Content-ID. This creates significant issues in rendering.
I investigated how other email clients handle this scenario. When
viewing the same email (sent from Apple Mail) in Gmail, only one image
appears—and it’s treated as an attachment, not inline. This happens
because both attachments are the same image, and Apple Mail only sends
one copy. See the screenshot below.
| Apple Mail | Gmail |
| -- | -- |
| <img width="646" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-27 at 8 20 17 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e0d1cd2d-e47c-4081-a53b-7a67106341b3"
/> | <img width="360" alt="Screenshot 2025-02-27 at 8 20 51 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b206e56e-8f86-43e9-867b-d895c36aff78"
/> |
A good fix for this would be to check if the Content-ID is missing and
then upload the file as a regular attachment. However, the Mail gem (for
some reason) automatically adds a default Content-ID to inline parts. I
need to dig into the source code to understand why this happens.
For now, I’ve implemented a check to treat non-image attachments as
regular attachments. Inline image attachments are already handled by
appending an image tag at the end if the content-id is not found in the
body. A sample conversation to test this behavior is
[here](https://app.chatwoot.com/app/accounts/1/conversations/46732).
Some email clients automatically set Content-Disposition to inline for
specific content types, such as images. In cases where the email body is
empty, inline attachments may not display correctly due to our previous
implementation. Our assumption was that these attachments are referenced
within text/plain or text/html parts.
Customer-reported issues, especially with Apple Mail, show emails with
attachments marked as inline but without any corresponding text parts.
This leads to missing attachments even though would have processed the
attachment.
This update introduces a check for the presence of a text part. If none
exists, inline attachments are treated as regular attachments and added
to the external attachments array, ensuring that all attachments display
properly.
<details>
<summary><b>Script to update the existing emails that are already
available in the system</b></summary>
```rb
def update_content id
message = Message.find id
conversation = message.conversation
message_id = message.source_id
channel = message.inbox.channel
authentication_type = 'XOAUTH2'
imap_password = Google::RefreshOauthTokenService.new(channel: channel).access_token
imap = Net::IMAP.new(channel.imap_address, port: channel.imap_port, ssl: true)
imap.authenticate(authentication_type, channel.imap_login, imap_password)
imap.select('INBOX')
results = imap.search(['HEADER', 'MESSAGE-ID', message_id])
message_content = imap.fetch(results.first, 'RFC822').first.attr['RFC822']
mail = MailPresenter.new(Mail.read_from_string(message_content))
mail_content = if mail.text_content.present?
mail.text_content[:reply]
elsif mail.html_content.present?
mail.html_content[:reply]
end
attachments = mail.attachments.last(Message::NUMBER_OF_PERMITTED_ATTACHMENTS)
inline_attachments = attachments.select { |attachment| attachment[:original].inline? && mail_content.present? }
regular_attachments = attachments - inline_attachments
regular_attachments.each do |mail_attachment|
attachment = message.attachments.new(
account_id: conversation.account_id,
file_type: 'file'
)
attachment.file.attach(mail_attachment[:blob])
end
message.save!
end
```
</details>
This change allows the user to configure both IMAP and SMTP for an email inbox. IMAP enables the user to see emails in Chatwoot. And user can use SMTP to reply to an email conversation.
Users can use the default settings to send and receive emails for email inboxes if both IMAP and SMTP are disabled.
Fixes#2520
Configuring an agent email also as a support email inbox leads to conversations getting created in a loop if notifications were also configured to the same email.
* feat: added support mailbox to handle email channel (#140)
Added a new mailbox called 'SupportMailbox' to handle all the
incoming emails other than reply emails.
An email channel will have a support email and forward email
associated with it. So we filter for the right email inbox based on
the support email of that inbox and route this to this mailbox.
This mailbox finds the account, inbox, contact (create a new one
if it does not exist) and creates a conversation and adds the
email content as the first message in the conversation.
Other minor things handled in this commit:
* renamed the procs for routing emails in application mailbox
* renamed ConversationMailbox to ReplyMailbox
* Added a fallback content in MailPresenter
* Added a record saving (bang) versions of enabling and disabling
features in Featurable module
* added new factory for the email channel
refs: #140
