Android multiple email attachments using Intent

Question

I've been working on Android program to send email with an attachment (image file, audio file, etc) using Intent with ACTION_SEND. The program is working when email has a single attachment. I used Intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri) to attach the designated image file to the mail and it is working fine, the mail can be delivered through the Gmail. However, when I tried to have multiple images attached to the same mail by calling Intent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uri) multiple times, it failed to work. None of the attachment show up in the email.

I searched the SDK documentation and Android programming user group about email attachment but cannot find any related info. However, I've discovered that there's another intent constant ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE (available since API level 4) which might meet my requirement. Based on SDK documentation, it simply states that it deliver multiple data to someone else, it works like ACTION_SEND, except the data is multiple. But I still could not figure out the correct usage for this command. I tried to declare intent with ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE, then call putExtra(EXTRA_STREAM, uri) multiple times to attach multiple images, but I got the same erroneous result just like before, none of the attachment show up in the email.

Has anyone tried with ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE and got it working with multiple email attachment?

Answer 1

Here is the code you need to create an emailIntent that contains multiple attachments.

public static void email(Context context, String emailTo, String emailCC,
    String subject, String emailText, List<String> filePaths)
{
    //need to "send multiple" to get more than one attachment
    final Intent emailIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE);
    emailIntent.setType("text/plain");
    emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_EMAIL, 
        new String[]{emailTo});
    emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_CC, 
        new String[]{emailCC});
    emailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT, subject); 
    emailIntent.putExtra(Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, emailText);
    //has to be an ArrayList
    ArrayList<Uri> uris = new ArrayList<Uri>();
    //convert from paths to Android friendly Parcelable Uri's
    for (String file : filePaths)
    {
        File fileIn = new File(file);
        Uri u = Uri.fromFile(fileIn);
        uris.add(u);
    }
    emailIntent.putParcelableArrayListExtra(Intent.EXTRA_STREAM, uris);
    context.startActivity(Intent.createChooser(emailIntent, "Send mail..."));
}