attachment.setContent Method

<< Creating an AttachmentPart Object | Accessing an AttachmentPart Object >>

138

SOAP

WITH

TTACHMENTS

API

FOR

AVA

also sets a content identifier, which can be used to identify this

AttachmentPart

object. After you have added content to

attachment

, you must add it to the

SOAPMessage

object, something that is done in the last line.

String stringContent = "Update address for Sunny Skies " +

"Inc., to 10 Upbeat Street, Pleasant Grove, CA 95439";

attachment.setContent(stringContent, "text/plain");
attachment.setContentId("update_address");

message.addAttachmentPart(attachment);

The

attachment

variable now represents an

AttachmentPart

object that con-

tains the string

stringContent

and has a header that contains the string

"text/

plain"

. It also has a

Content-Id

header with

"update_address"

as its value.

And

attachment

is now part of

message

The other two

SOAPMessage.createAttachment

methods create an

Attach-

mentPart

object complete with content. One is very similar to the

Attachment-

Part.setContent

method in that it takes the same parameters and does

essentially the same thing. It takes a Java

Object

containing the content and a

String

giving the content type. As with

AttachmentPart.setContent

, the

Object

can be a

String

, a stream, a

javax.xml.transform.Source

object, or a

javax.activation.DataHandler

object.

The other method for creating an

AttachmentPart

object with content takes a

DataHandler

object, which is part of the JavaBeans Activation Framework

(JAF). Using a

DataHandler

object is fairly straightforward. First, you create a

java.net.URL

object for the file you want to add as content. Then you create a

DataHandler

object initialized with the

URL

object:

URL url = new URL("http://greatproducts.com/gizmos/img.jpg");
DataHandler dataHandler = new DataHandler(url);
AttachmentPart attachment =

message.createAttachmentPart(dataHandler);

attachment.setContentId("attached_image");

message.addAttachmentPart(attachment);

You might note two things about this code fragment. First, it sets a header for

Content-ID

using the method

setContentId

. This method takes a

String

that

can be whatever you like to identify the attachment. Second, unlike the other
methods for setting content, this one does not take a

String

for

Content-Type

This method takes care of setting the

Content-Type

header for you, something