Q: Send Mail for TRADITIONAL CHINESE_TAIWAN.ZHT16BIG5

Question

I have an oracle database 8.1.7 , NLS_LANG is TRADITIONAL CHINESE_TAIWAN.ZHT16BIG5 and Using Pl/sql Package to send mail, I can't send Chinese from mail package, This is my problem.
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Answer 1

The original SMTP protocol requires that the email to be in pure ASCII. To send email in Chinese, you may either use 8bit-MIME extension (if your SMTP server supports it, which is supported quite commonly these days) and send the email as-is, or encode your email that contain non-ASCII in one of the few MIME encoding scheme (e.g. Base-64, Quote-Printable) so that the encoded form is in pure ASCII.
The following is an example that send email using 8bit-MIME extenstion:
Rem
Rem mb_smtp.sql - Demo program to show how to send non-ASCII (including
Rem multi-byte) e-mails over the SMTP protocol using the UTL_SMTP package.
Rem It requires the remote SMTP server to support 8bit-MIME SMTP extension
Rem (which many SMTP servers support nowadays).
Rem
DECLARE
-- A signature that will appear in the mail's MIME header. Useful for
-- versioning.
AGENT_SIGNATURE CONSTANT VARCHAR2(100) := 'Oracle 8i - UTL_SMTP';
-- SMTP server
SMTP_SERVER CONSTANT VARCHAR2(256) := 'smtp.some-domain.com';
TYPE vc2_table IS TABLE OF VARCHAR2(256) INDEX BY binary_integer;
conn utl_smtp.connection;
sender VARCHAR2(256);
recipients vc2_table;
-- Helper procedure to set a MIME header
PROCEDURE mime_header(conn IN OUT NOCOPY utl_smtp.connection,
name IN VARCHAR2,
value IN VARCHAR2) AS
BEGIN
utl_smtp.write_data(conn, name | | ': ' | | value | | utl_tcp.CRLF);
END;
PROCEDURE mime_header_continue(conn IN OUT NOCOPY utl_smtp.connection,
value IN VARCHAR2) AS
BEGIN
utl_smtp.write_data(conn, ' ' | | value | | utl_tcp.CRLF);
END;
-- Helper function to generate full email signature. Format of
-- is '"First-name Last-name" <email-address>'
FUNCTION get_full_signature(userid IN VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 AS
BEGIN
RETURN '"' &#0124; &#0124; userid -- can use LDAP to find full name of recipient here
&#0124; &#0124; '" <' &#0124; &#0124; userid &#0124; &#0124; '>';
END;
-- Begin a mail connection:
-- conn - SMTP connection
-- sender - sender's email addr (our server allows bogus address
-- as long as it is a full email address ([email protected]).
-- recipients - recipients's user IDs
-- subject - email subject
-- mime_type - MIME type ('text/plain' - plan text, 'text/html' - HTML)
-- RETURN:
-- FALSE when shouldn't continue because:
-- 1. zero recipients
-- 2. mail server is down
-- TRUE when the caller should proceed.
FUNCTION begin_mail(conn OUT NOCOPY utl_smtp.connection,
sender IN VARCHAR2,
recipients IN vc2_table,
subject IN VARCHAR2,
mime_type IN VARCHAR2) RETURN BOOLEAN IS
replies utl_smtp.replies;
eight_bit_mime_support BOOLEAN;
BEGIN
IF (recipients.count <=0) THEN
RETURN FALSE;
END IF;
BEGIN
conn := utl_smtp.open_connection(SMTP_SERVER);
EXCEPTION
WHEN utl_smtp.transient_error THEN
RETURN FALSE; -- SMTP server not available
END;
-- open SMTP connection
replies := utl_smtp.ehlo(conn, 'some-domain.com');
eight_bit_mime_support := FALSE;
FOR i IN 1..replies.count LOOP
IF ((replies(i).code < 200) OR (replies(i).code > 299)) THEN
RAISE program_error; -- SMTP server doesn't support EHLO command
END IF;
IF replies(i).text = '8BITMIME' THEN
eight_bit_mime_support := TRUE;
END IF;
END LOOP;
IF (NOT eight_bit_mime_support) THEN
RAISE program_error; -- no 8bit-MIME support
END IF;
-- specify sender's address (our server allows bogus address
-- as long as it is a full email address ([email protected]).
utl_smtp.mail(conn, sender);
-- specify recipient(s) of the email.
FOR i IN 1..recipients.count LOOP
utl_smtp.rcpt(conn, recipients(i));
END LOOP;
-- start body of email
utl_smtp.open_data(conn);
-- Set "From" MIME header
mime_header(conn, 'From', get_full_signature(sender));
-- Set "To" MIME header. Overflow 2nd and following recipients
-- to separate lines to avoid hitting SMTP line-size limit.
IF (recipients.count = 1) THEN
mime_header(conn, 'To', get_full_signature(recipients(1)));
ELSE
mime_header(conn, 'To', get_full_signature(recipients(1)) &#0124; &#0124; ',');
FOR i IN 2..recipients.count LOOP
mime_header_continue(conn, get_full_signature(recipients(i)));
IF (i < recipients.count) THEN
mime_header_continue(conn, get_full_signature(recipients(i)) &#0124; &#0124;
ELSE
mime_header_continue(conn, get_full_signature(recipients(i)));
END IF;
END LOOP;
END IF;
mime_header(conn, 'Subject', subject); -- Other SMTP headers
-- Content-type MIME headers
mime_header(conn, 'Content-Type', mime_type);
mime_header(conn, 'X-Mailer', AGENT_SIGNATURE);
-- Priority:
-- 1, 2 - High
-- 3 - Normal
-- 4, 5 - Low
mime_header(conn, 'X-Priority', 1);
-- This empty line denotes end of MIME headers and beginning of message
-- body. Don't remove.
utl_smtp.write_data(conn, utl_tcp.CRLF);
RETURN TRUE;
END;
-- Write actual ASCII message body (plain text or HTML). Can be called
-- repeatedly.
PROCEDURE write_body(conn IN OUT NOCOPY utl_smtp.connection,
data IN VARCHAR2) AS
BEGIN
utl_smtp.write_data(conn, data);
END;
-- Write actual non-ASCII (including multi-byte) message body.
-- Can be called repeatedly.
PROCEDURE write_mb_body(conn IN OUT NOCOPY utl_smtp.connection,
data IN VARCHAR2) AS
BEGIN
utl_smtp.write_raw_data(conn, utl_raw.cast_to_raw(data));
END;
-- End the email.
PROCEDURE end_mail(conn IN OUT NOCOPY utl_smtp.connection) AS
BEGIN
utl_smtp.close_data(conn);
utl_smtp.quit(conn);
END;
BEGIN
-- Sender
sender := '[email protected]';
-- List of mail recipients (userids).
recipients(1) := '[email protected]';
IF (begin_mail(conn, sender, recipients, 'Mail subject',
'text/plain; charset=big5')) THEN
-- Send plain text mail content.
write_body(conn, 'line 1.' &#0124; &#0124; utl_tcp.CRLF);
write_body(conn, 'line 2.' &#0124; &#0124; utl_tcp.CRLF);
write_body(conn, 'line 3.' &#0124; &#0124; utl_tcp.CRLF);
write_mb_body(conn, 'line 1 <some multi-byte text> 1i>G$M.' &#0124; &#0124;
utl_tcp.CRLF);
-- End mail.
end_mail(conn);
END IF;
EXCEPTION
-- In begin_mail, utl_smtp.transient_error exception is trapped if
-- the SMTP server is not available. If other error occurs (e.g. the
-- the mail is rejected because bad sender address), trap the
-- exception, do something and close the connection.
WHEN utl_smtp.transient_error OR utl_smtp.permanent_error THEN
utl_smtp.quit(conn);
END;
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