generate .mht file programmatically

Question

Does anybody know how to generate .mht file programmatically in C#, with embedded images in it? The thing is i have realised that .mht files are capable of embedding images

Answer 1

MSDN has a great article (June 2011) about how to create an MHT file using both CDO and System.Net.Mail. C# source code is included in-full. I would use this above the VB.Net or Google Code version.

Answer 2

It is possible and has definitely been done by others - relevant material and libraries/source code:

• RFC 2557 is the foundation of MHT format
• VB.NET source code for generating MHT files from an URL
• Chilkat MHT .NET library (commercial)
• ASPNetMHT (commercial)
• C# source code for generating MHT files from an URL
• CDO.Message COM component, which exposes the IMessage interface

Answer 3

I'd start with RFC 2557 so that I had some basic understanding of what I was working with. Then go look for code/libraries that deal with it.

To my knowledge there are no BCL classes to deal with MHTML.

Answer 4

In a Windows environment you can do this directly by means of the CDO.Message COM component, which exposes the IMessage interface
I dont know the details of importing COM objects in C# so I'll give you a quick example in C-like syntax:

IMsgObj = CreateObject("CDO.Message")   // create the object
IMsgObj.CreateMHTMLBody("http://www.example.com/") // convert the URL to MHTML
IMsgObj.GetStream().SaveToFile("output.mht")  // save it to a file

The CLSID of the CDO.Message components is {CD000001-8B95-11D1-82DB-00C04FB1625D}

Keep in mind though, that this component is meant for generating e-mail messages (.eml file extension rather than .mht) which means JavaScript files are not included. Otherwise they are roughly equivalent.