WebSphere Message Brokers
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Writer: Terry Cowling

Reference topic

This build: July 31, 2007 21:26:27

MIME parser use and restrictions

This topic provides a general introduction to the MIME parser and some of the restrictions in its use. The MIME domain does not support the full MIME standard, but supports specific known uses of MIME.

MIME stands for Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions. A multipart MIME message comprises a number of message parts, each qualified by MIME headers. The MIME domain and parser enable you to parse and write multipart MIME messages.

MIME is used to send e-mail messages. When the e-mail includes attachments, a multipart MIME message is used. Multipart MIME is becoming more widely used as a convenient physical format for sending other kinds of message that have attachments or that consist of multiple separate parts.

Examples are:

Restrictions

The MIME parser is bitstream driven and has no external metadata. It relies exclusively on bitstream metadata when parsing and on tree metadata when writing. The parser does not validate MIME messages against a message model and it ignores the tooling Validate property. The parts of a MIME message are handled as BLOBs. You can choose to parse specific MIME parts using a different parser. If this is an MRM parser, they can be validated in the usual way. The MIME parser does not support on-demand parsing and ignores the Parse Timing property.

You can specify the new MIME domain either at runtime in an MQRFH2 header (WebSphere MQ only) or statically in their message flow in the tooling (on the input nodes MQGet, HTTPRequest, ResetContentDescriptor or Start of changeXSLTransformEnd of change). The MIME parser is then invoked to own the last child of root (for example, the message body). The MIME domain can be specified with the ESQL CREATE PARSE clause and ASBITSTREAM function to parse and write bitstreams. The MIME parser handles documents received both over the HTTP transport (where the Content-Type appears as an HTTP header) and over other transports (where the Content-Type header is part of the message body). In both cases, set the Content-Type value using the ContentType property in the MIME domain. Setting the Content-Type value directly in the MIME tree or HTTP trees can lead to the value being ignored or used inconsistently.

Typically, the MIME parser handles the majority of uses of MIME in application-to-application messaging, including multipart MIME with a single part and non-multipart MIME documents.

Related concepts
Message modeling
The message model
Related tasks
Developing message models
Working with message model objects
Related reference
Message model reference information
Message model object properties
Additional MRM domain information
Additional MIME domain information
Additional TDS information
Related information
RFC 1521: MIME Part One: Mechanisms for Specifying and Describing the Format of Internet Message Bodies
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This build: July 31, 2007 21:26:27

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