RegEx

Using RegEx to extract MIME parts from a Microsoft Graph API email stream

Marky Roden Microsoft Graph, O365 , , ,

In this article I will demonstrate how a Regular Expression can be used to extract all MIME content references from within an HTML Stream.

Introduction

In the previous article we looked at how the base64 encoded version of an embedded MIME Image can be extracted from the Microsoft Graph. In this article we will start to look at how we are going to  automate the solving of that problem by identifying all the MIME encoded images from within the graph API HTML stream.

Regular expressions

RegEx is mentally challenging to most of us, and that is why some beautiful people created Stackoverflow and Google. I was able to find this solution to a similar problem of extracting tag attributes from an HTML string.

Modifying this slightly for my needs in context of the graph I was able to come up with the following:

var content = data.body.content;
var cids = content.match(/cid["']?((?:.(?!["']?\s+(?:\S+)=|[>"']))+.)?/g);

and this will take an HTML stream with different kinds of MIME reference and return them all as an array.

Here is the sample HTML string with just the images highlightedc1

and here’s the result of the test in firebug logging the cids array

c2

 

Conclusion

In this article we have seen that with a simple Regular expression we can extract the Image src attributes relating to the MIME parts within the MS Graph API feed.

Caveat: This assumes a lot about the structure of the API and that is will continue to conform to this structure.

 

How to create Dynamic Workflow functionality in Outlook Add-Ins based on unique keys

Marky Roden O365, Office Add-In , , ,

In this article I will demonstrate how to use a regular expression to provide dynamic contexual assignment of an Outlook add-in. Using that regular expression we will be able to identify the necessary information to link the Add-In to some external dynamic workflow functionality.

Introduction

During the Collab365 presentation I demonstrated a workflow application which was a simple vacation request approval. In that demonstration I showed how we are able to detect a unique key inside of an email and then use that value to open the workflow within the add in (https://youtu.be/t6kRFV09TYs?t=1950).

In previous articles I have demonstrated how to create a contextual add-in and in this article we will look at how we can take that up a notch and make the context dynamic and useful.

I am going to demonstrate the capability in the context of a napacloud add-in so that you are able to work along.

Messing with RegEx

Regular Expressions are a weird an wonderfully powerful capability, generally reserved for people way smarter than me to figure out. Fortunately there are many example sites which can be used to help you figure out how you should build your regular expression.

I used http://scriptular.com/ which allowed me to test my regular expression until I made it work.

We need to create a unique key within out email so that it can be picked up by Outlook. We cannot use an existing URL though because there is already functionality associated with that.

r2

Using regular expressions in an Office Add-in

Inside of the napacloud tooling we are able to play with adding a regular expression to the context of the Add-In.

r1

So I insert my regular expression into the box, save and run. In this case (for demonstration I make the number of characters fixed to be 6)

r3

Test Email

I created a simple test email with a few expressions which COULD match……and when the Add-In runs – only only of the links is highlighted

r4

So now what?

Well what we want to happen is when the user clock on that Workflow Id: Ac9sXP link we want to take them to the right page within our Application (surfaced through the Add-In).

Within the Office.initialize we are able to determine functionality which happens when the user selects the Add-In. I used the same regular expression to match the desired Workflow Id

Office.initialize = function (reason) {
        $(document).ready(function () {
            Office.context.mailbox.item.body.getAsync(
		  "text",
		  { asyncContext:"This is passed to the callback" },
		  function callback(result) {
		    // Do something with the result
			var str = result.value; 
			var res = str.match(/Workflow\sId:\s[0-9|a-z|A-Z]{6}/g).toString();      				
			$("#content-main").html("The RegEx matched is---> "+res)
		  });
        });
    };

When you run the sample in the browser you get this

r5

More advanced

Once you have this string in JavaScript you can do a number of things with it, the two most obvious to me are:

  • Create an iFrame within the application and add the WorkflowID to the Query String
  • If you have an angular application you can then route the user to the correct document using the WorkflowID

Conclusion

In this article I showed how to create a contextual addin using a semi-complex Regular Expression. Then using that exposed value from the email we can surface dynamic functionality for the user.

The Code

I have posted the code from this sample napacloud out on GitHub for anyone who wants to download it an play with it

You can find it here:

https://github.com/markyroden/RegExInOutlookAddIn