Efficiently Extracting Plain Text from RTF Emails Using Aspose.Email for C++

Aspose.Email Product Family
1

We’re using Aspose.Email for C++ (full licensed version) to process email messages, and we’ve encountered an issue with extracting plain text content from RTF-formatted emails.

Our requirement is to extract the first 50 characters of the email body as a message description. Here’s the problem we’re facing:

  • The get_body() method works fine for most email formats, but it fails to retrieve plain text content from RTF emails.
  • While get_BodyHtml() can return an HTML string for these RTF emails, extracting plain text from a potentially large HTML string would be performance-intensive, especially since we only need the first 50 characters.

Could you please advise if there’s an efficient way to get plain text content from RTF emails using Aspose.Email for C++? Ideally, we hope there is a method to directly obtain the plain text content of RTF emails without having to process the complete HTML string first, thereby keeping the extraction process lightweight and efficient.

Thank you for your support.

2

@liangyongwen

To efficiently extract plain text from RTF emails using Aspose.Email for C++, you can utilize the MailMessage class to load the email and convert the RTF content to plain text. While there isn’t a direct method to extract plain text from RTF emails without processing the entire content, you can implement a workaround.

Cause

RTF emails often contain formatted text that needs to be converted to plain text for easier processing and readability.

Solution

Here’s a step-by-step approach to achieve this:

  1. Load the Email: Use the MailMessage::Load method to load your RTF email.
  2. Convert RTF to Plain Text: Retrieve the body using the MailMessage::get_Body() method. If it returns RTF, convert it to plain text by first converting it to HTML and then extracting the text.
  3. Extract the First 50 Characters: Once you have the plain text, take the first 50 characters for your description.

Next Steps

Here’s a sample code snippet to illustrate this process:

#include <aspose.email.h>

using namespace Aspose::Email;

void ExtractPlainTextFromRtfEmail(const String& filePath) {
    // Load the email
    SharedPtr<MailMessage> mailMessage = MailMessage::Load(filePath);
    
    // Get the body
    String body = mailMessage->get_Body();
    
    // Check if the body is in RTF format
    if (body.StartsWith("{\\rtf")) {
        // Convert RTF to HTML (you may need to implement this conversion)
        String htmlBody = ConvertRtfToHtml(body);
        
        // Extract plain text from HTML
        String plainText = ExtractPlainTextFromHtml(htmlBody);
        
        // Get the first 50 characters
        String description = plainText.Substring(0, 50);
        std::cout << "Description: " << description.ToUtf8String() << std::endl;
    } else {
        // If it's not RTF, just take the first 50 characters directly
        String description = body.Substring(0, 50);
        std::cout << "Description: " << description.ToUtf8String() << std::endl;
    }
}

// Implement ConvertRtfToHtml and ExtractPlainTextFromHtml as needed

This approach allows you to handle RTF emails efficiently while ensuring that you can extract the necessary information. If you require further assistance with the conversion functions or any other aspect, please let me know!

Thank you for your attention, and I hope this solution meets your needs!