Apex_mail - Email Display Name

Question

We have had a request from a client to send the display name of the sender along with the email address in the format (Display Name <[email protected]>). When i try to use the send procedure i encounter errors. I know that emails can be sent with a display name.
Does anyone have any experience with this matter?
Regards
Kevin
p_from => 'Kevin Mann <[email protected]>',

Answer 1

I configured mail on a APEX 3.0.1 instance yesterday and immediately got a 501 error. This is what I found.
The examples in the documentation for APEX_MAIL and UTL_SMTP are wrong. Here's a snippet from the first example in "Oracle® Database PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference 10g Release 2".
BEGIN
c := UTL_SMTP.OPEN_CONNECTION('smtp-server.acme.com');
UTL_SMTP.HELO(c, 'foo.com');
UTL_SMTP.MAIL(c, '[email protected]');
UTL_SMTP.RCPT(c, '[email protected]');
Sniffing the packets using ethereal, the SMTP commands generated are
HELO foo.com
MAIL FROM:[email protected]
RCPT TO:[email protected]
In other words the strings supplied to UTL_SMTP.MAIL and UTL_SMTP.RCPT are passed to the respective SMTP commands verbatim without any checking, filtering, or modification. In this example, according to RFC 821 and RFC 2821, this creates invalid parameters since the address in the MAIL FROM and RCPT TO commands is suppose to be enclosed in '<' and '>'. In other words the example above should read.
BEGIN
c := UTL_SMTP.OPEN_CONNECTION('smtp-server.acme.com');
UTL_SMTP.HELO(c, 'foo.com');
UTL_SMTP.MAIL(c, '<[email protected]>');
UTL_SMTP.RCPT(c, '<[email protected]>');
However, most modern mail transport agents seem to be liberal about what they accept and can figure it out. Unfortunately, the MTA my organization uses is old and strict, and wants the pointy brackets.
In APEX_MAIL the two parameters to send (p_to and p_from) seem to pass directly to UTL_SMTP.MAIL and UTL_SMTP.RCPT verbatim which means it's documentation is also wrong because it omits the pointy brackets.
So if you were trying to do.
apex_mail.send(p_to => 'Oracle <[email protected]>',
p_from => 'Kevin Mann <[email protected]>',
p_body => 'Hello World!');
Then receiving a 501 error would be correct according to the SMTP specs. The correct syntax would be
apex_mail.send(p_to => '<[email protected]>',
p_from => '<[email protected]>',
p_body => 'From: Oracle <[email protected]>' || utl_tcp.crlf ||
'To: Kevin Mann <[email protected]>' || utl_tcp.crlf ||
'Hello World!');
But again, some MTA's will figure it out (the Postfix 2.2.10 server I was testing on gave a error, but the other much older MTA didn't).
Basically using UTL_SMTP or APEX_MAIL is the same as sending mail using telnet and typing the SMTP commands in by hand.