Velocity Template not able to parse and display data in html format

Question

I have a simple email program written in Java and Spring with Velocity template to format data that sends email which should be displayed in html format. However, it just displays the data along with the html tags embedded in it without actually parsing them.

Am I missing anything here?

EmailService.java

public class EmailService {
    private static final Log LOG = LogFactory.getLog(EmailService.class);
    private static final String EMAIL_SUBJECT = ":: Risk Assessment Job Summary Results::";
    private final MailSender mailSender;
    private final String emailRecipientAddress;
    private final String emailSenderAddress;
    private static final String ERROR_MSG = "Error while sending notification email";
    private final TemplateFactory velocityTemplateFactory;
    private Template riskAssessmentJobResultSummaryTemplate;

    public EmailService(MailSender mailSender, String emailRecipientAddress,
            String emailSenderAddress, TemplateFactory velocityTemplateFactory) {
        this.mailSender = mailSender;
        this.emailRecipientAddress = emailRecipientAddress;
        this.emailSenderAddress = emailSenderAddress;
        this.velocityTemplateFactory = velocityTemplateFactory;
    }

    public void notify(String messageBody) {
        JavaMailSender javaMailSender = (JavaMailSender)mailSender;
        MimeMessage message = javaMailSender.createMimeMessage();
        MimeMessageHelper mimeMessageHelper = new MimeMessageHelper(message);
        try {
            mimeMessageHelper.setSubject(getHostname() + " - " + EMAIL_SUBJECT);
            mimeMessageHelper.setTo(emailRecipientAddress);
            mimeMessageHelper.setFrom(emailSenderAddress);
            mimeMessageHelper.setText(getEmailContent(messageBody));
            javaMailSender.send(message);
        } catch (MailException e) {
            throw new EmailSendException(ERROR_MSG, e);
        } catch (MessagingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    private static String getHostname() {
        try {
            return InetAddress.getLocalHost().getHostName();
        } catch (UnknownHostException e) {
            return "unknown host";
        }
    }

    private String getEmailContent(String messageBody) {
        try {
            StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
            this.riskAssessmentJobResultSummaryTemplate =
                    velocityTemplateFactory.create("velocity/risk-assessment-job-results-summary.vm");
            VelocityContext velocityContext = new VelocityContext();
            velocityContext.put("hostname", getHostname());
            velocityContext.put("messageBody", messageBody);
            this.riskAssessmentJobResultSummaryTemplate.merge(velocityContext, stringWriter);
            return stringWriter.toString();
        } catch (IOException ex) {
            LOG.error("Unable to read the email template", ex);
            return null;
        }
    }
}

risk-assessment-job-results-summary.vm

<h3>Summary report for Risk Assessment Job on ${hostname}:</h3>
<table style="border:none;">
    <tr><td>${messageBody}</td></tr>
</table>

Actual Email Output:

<h3>Summary report for Risk Assessment Job on KOP-DBT0J12:</h3> 
<table style="border:none;">
<tr><td>
TotalTxPending: 0
TotalTxAccepted: 0
TotalTxRejected: 0
TotalTxProcessed: 0
</td></tr>
</table>

Expected Email Output:

Summary report for Risk Assessment Job on KOP-DBT0J12:
TotalTxPending: 0
TotalTxAccepted: 0
TotalTxRejected: 0
TotalTxProcessed: 0

Have you tried to send that string to email? as i think your program works very fine and that string is pretty good to send email — Pervez, Jul 12 '17 at 18:38
Email sending works ! The problem is the content in that email — Nital, Jul 12 '17 at 18:41

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 12 '17 at 18:44

2

Set the content as html

 message.setContent(getEmailContent(messageBody), "text/html; charset=utf-8")

answered Jul 12 '17 at 18:44

Ori Marko

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 12 '17 at 18:47

2

Found the smoking gun :)

This one line change fixed the problem. Here the true flag denotes the content type is html in the email body.

mimeMessageHelper.setText(getEmailContent(messageBody), true);

answered Jul 12 '17 at 18:47

Nital

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bajji · Answer 3 · 2017-07-12T19:02:06.177

-1

this should be the answer

mimeMessageHelper.setContent(someHtmlMessage, "text/html; charset=utf-8");

edited Jul 12 '17 at 19:02

answered Jul 12 '17 at 18:45

bajji

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want to know the reason for downvoting? – bajji Jul 12 '17 at 18:49
Your proposed solution won't solve this problem. The change is required in the java code and not in the template. – Nital Jul 12 '17 at 18:55
ahh! there you go. I was too fast to not to think about that. I just looked at my program and compared your template with mine and thought this could be the mistake. – bajji Jul 12 '17 at 19:00
please look at [answer] – JimHawkins Jul 13 '17 at 10:45

Velocity Template not able to parse and display data in html format

3 Answers3