Message Documentation

Welcome to the Message documentation. This component provides libraries for parsing, validating, and serializing Internet message format (message/rfc822) data according to RFC 5322 and MIME (RFC 2045-2049).

What is message/rfc822?

The message/rfc822 media type represents Internet email messages. The format is defined by a family of specifications:

  • RFC 5322 - Internet Message Format (headers like From, To, Subject, Date)
  • RFC 2045-2049 - MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) for attachments, HTML, and non-ASCII content

This library provides complete support for:

  • Email header parsing and generation
  • MIME multipart message handling
  • Content-Transfer-Encoding (Base64, Quoted-Printable)
  • RFC 2047 encoded-words for non-ASCII in headers
  • Message validation against RFC requirements

Available Implementations

Choose the implementation that matches your technology stack:

.NET

Full-featured .NET library for RFC 5322 + MIME parsing and generation.

Quick Start

.NET

dotnet add package SpecWorks.Message

using Message;

// Parse an email message
var parser = new MessageParser();
var message = parser.Parse(emailText);

Console.WriteLine($"From: {message.From}");
Console.WriteLine($"To: {message.To}");
Console.WriteLine($"Subject: {message.Subject}");
Console.WriteLine($"Body: {message.TextBody}");

// Handle multipart messages
if (message.IsMultipart)
{
    foreach (var part in message.Parts)
    {
        Console.WriteLine($"Part: {part.ContentType}");
    }
}

Specification Compliance

All implementations follow these IETF specifications:

Specification Description Status
RFC 5322 Internet Message Format ✅ Implemented
RFC 2045 MIME Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies ✅ Implemented
RFC 2046 MIME Part Two: Media Types ✅ Implemented
RFC 2047 MIME Part Three: Non-ASCII Text in Headers ✅ Implemented
RFC 2822 Internet Message Format (obsoleted by 5322) ✅ Compatible
RFC 822 Original message format ✅ Compatible

Test Cases

All implementations are tested against shared test cases in the testcases/ directory.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! See the GitHub repository for:

  • Issue tracking
  • Pull request guidelines
  • Development setup instructions

License

All Message implementations are licensed under the MIT License.

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