Binaryworld - Mail Tutorial in VB.NET ... [ VB.net -> Internet Programming ]

Microsoft has made life more easy by adding an in-built .NET class for SMTP Mail. This article will show you how you can take advantage of System.Web.Mail namespace in VB.Net

Basic Mail Message

Click here to copy the following block

Imports System.Web.Mail

Dim m As New System.Web.Mail.MailMessage()

With m
.From = "abc@mycompany.com"
.To = "xyz@yourcompany.com"
.Subject = "Test email from mycompany"
.Body = "Hellooooo how are you"
End With

SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "MySMTPServerName" '//This can be your own mail server or ISP SMTP server
SmtpMail.Send(m)

Obviously you will need to change the FROM and TO fields to be something more realistic but this should give you an idea of the basics.

You've probably noticed that I never declared SmtpMail anywhere right? No this is not an omission, this is necessary as the SmtpMail class does not need to have an object created, we can directly call the Send method.

HTML Mail

Yes, the above example was bland! So lets add some spice!

Click here to copy the following block

Imports System.Web.Mail

Dim m As New System.Web.Mail.MailMessage()

With m
.From = "abc@mycompany.com"
.To = "xyz@yourcompany.com"
.Subject = "Test email from mycompany"
.BodyFormat = MailFormat.Html

.Body = "<HTML><HEAD></HEAD>" & _
  "<BODY><a href='http://binaryworld.net>Click Here</a> to visit binaryworld.net" & _
  "</BODY></HTML>"

.Priority = MailPriority.High
End With

SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "MySMTPServerName"
SmtpMail.Send(m)

Ok so here you can see that we add a message the same as before except we set the format to be HTML. This allows you to easily send any HTML you like in your Email.

We also set the priority of the mail message to high.

Attachments

Ok so you want attachments right? Well with .NET is really very easy to do:

Click here to copy the following block

Imports System.Web.Mail

Dim m As New System.Web.Mail.MailMessage()

With m
.From = "abc@mycompany.com"
.To = "xyz@yourcompany.com"
.Subject = "Test email from mycompany"
.Body = "Test Email attachments"

.Attachments.Add(New System.Web.Mail.MailAttachment("c:\test1.txt"))
.Attachments.Add(New System.Web.Mail.MailAttachment("c:\test2.txt"))
End With

SmtpMail.SmtpServer = "MySMTPServerName"
SmtpMail.Send(m)

You can see we are mailing test1.txt and test2.txt files as attachments in this example. Similarly you can send as many attachments as your service provider will allow.