A mapping from RFC822/MIME to XML

Network Working Group                                          J. Borden
Request for Comments: nnnn                     The Open HealthCare Group
Category: Standards Track                                     June, 2000

Page 1

Status of this Memo

This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for
the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for 
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet 
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and 
status of this protocol. This memo is to be submitted as an Internet
Draft. Its current state is early. Distribution of this memo will be
unlimited once submitted.

Introduction

The XML MIME Transformation Protocol (XMTP) defines a mapping 
between RFC822/MIME messages and XML documents. The mapping is 
straightforward and allows MIME messages to be integrated into XML 
processing systems. For example an SMTP e-mail can be transformed by XSLT 
into an HTML page for viewing within a browser.

Protocol

The RFC822/MIME message corresponds to an XML document having a 
root "mime" element in XML namespace "http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp" 
e.g.

<mime:MIME xmlns:mime="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp">
	...
	</mime:MIME>

Headers

The RFC822/MIME headers are represented as elements within the 
mime root. The value of the header becomes the content of the element. 
Parameters are represented as attributes of the header element.

<MIME xmlns="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp">
 <From>jborden@mediaone.net</From>
 <To>jon@openhealth.org</To>
 <Content-Type charset="iso-8859-1"
 >text/html</Content-Type>
 <Content-Transfer-Encoding
 >quoted-printable</Content-Transfer-Encoding>
	...
 </MIME>

Body

The body is contained within the <Body> element. The XMTP 
namespace does not apply to the contents of the Body element. The 
XMTP namespace does apply to parts of a multipart body.

Multipart messages

The body of a multipart message will contain the element <Parts>. 
Each part consists of a mime message which is represented as a <mime> 
subelement of the Parts root.

<MIME xmlns:mime="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp"
 xmlns="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp">
 <From>jborden@mediaone.net</mime:From>
 <To>jon@openhealth.org</mime:To>
 <Content-Type>multipart/related</Content-Type>
	 <mime:Body xmlns="">
 <mime:Part xmlns="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp">
 <Content-ID>xxxxx$yyyyy@openhealth.org</Content-ID>
 <Body >The contents of this part are text</Body>
 </mime:Part>
 </mime:Body>
 </MIME>

Examples

A simple text RFC822 message:

Received: from jabr (jabr.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.34.211])
 by chmls05.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id XAA27071
 for <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>; Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:42:47 -0400 (EDT)
 From: "Borden, Jonathan" <jborden@mediaone.net>
 To: "XMTP" <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>
 Subject: this is a simple message
 Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:33:49 -0400
 Message-ID: <001501bdf723$74f03fe0$d3228017@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-Type: text/plain
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

This is a simple text message which will be converted into XML as shown
   below

The XMTP message

<MIME xmlns:mime="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp"
 xmlns="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp">
 <Content-Type>text/plain</Content-Type>
 <Content-transfer-encoding>7bit</Content-transfer-encoding>
 <Date>Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:33:49 -0400</Date>
 <From>"Borden, Jonathan" <jborden@mediaone.net></From>
 <Importance>Normal</Importance>
 <Message-ID
 ><001501bdf723$74f03fe0$d3228017@jabr.ne.mediaone.net></Message-ID>
 <MIME-Version>1.0</MIME-Version>
 <Received>from jabr (jabr.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.34.211])
 by chmls05.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id XAA27071
 for <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>; 
 Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:42:47 -0400 (EDT)</Received>
 <Subject>this is a simple message</Subject>
 <To>"XMTP" <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net></To>
 <Body>This is a simple text message which will be converted into XML as shown
 below</Body>
 </MIME>

A multipart message:

Received: from jabr (jabr.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.34.211])
 by chmls05.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id XAA27071
 for <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>; Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:42:47 -0400 (EDT)
 From: "Borden, Jonathan" <jborden@mediaone.net>
 To: "XMTP" <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>
 Subject: this is a simple message
 Date: Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:33:49 -0400
 Message-ID: <001501bdf723$74f03fe0$d3228018@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
 boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0016_01BDF701.EDDE9FE0"
 Importance: Normal

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

------=_NextPart_000_0016_01BDF701.EDDE9FE0
   Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Here is the text of the message ... its being transmitted in 'HTML' format
   but the text is a separate part for e-mail readers that don't understand
   HTML. We can't assume that all valid HTML is XML so we have to escape all of
   the HTML ... or use a CDATA section

jon

------=_NextPart_000_0016_01BDF701.EDDE9FE0
   Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
   Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
 <HTML>
 <HEAD>

<META content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-8859-1" =
 http-equiv=3DContent-Type>
 <META content=3D'"MSHTML 4.72.3110.7"' name=3DGENERATOR>
 </HEAD>
 <BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff>
 Here is the text of the message ... its being transmitted in 'HTML' =
 format but=20
 the text is a separate part for e-mail readers that don't understand =
 HTML. We=20
 can't assume that all valid HTML is XML so we have to escape all of the HTML ... .or use a CDATA=20

section jon </BODY></HTML>

------=_NextPart_000_0016_01BDF701.EDDE9FE0--

The XMTP multipart message

<MIME xmlns:mime="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp" 
 xmlns="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp">
 <Content-Type boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0016_01BDF701.EDDE9FE0"
 >multipart/alternative</Content-Type>
 <Content-transfer-encoding>binary</Content-transfer-encoding>
 <Date>Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:33:49 -0400</Date>
 <From>"Borden, Jonathan" <jborden@mediaone.net></From>
 <Importance>Normal</Importance>
 <Message-ID
 ><001501bdf723$74f03fe0$d3228018@jabr.ne.mediaone.net></Message-ID>
 <MIME-Version>1.0</MIME-Version>
 <Received>from jabr (jabr.ne.mediaone.net [24.128.34.211])
 by chmls05.mediaone.net (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id XAA27071
 for <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net>; Tue, 13 Oct 1998 23:42:47 -0400
 (EDT)</Received>
 <Subject>this is a simple message</Subject>
 <To>"XMTP" <test-xmtp@jabr.ne.mediaone.net></To>
 <mime:Body>
 <Parts>
 <MIME xmlns:mime="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp" 
 xmlns="http://www.openhealth.org/xmtp">
 <Content-Type charset="iso-8859-1">text/plain</Content-Type>
 <Content-transfer-encoding>7bit</Content-transfer-encoding>
 <mime:Body xmlns=""><![CDATA[
 Here is the text of the message ... its being transmitted in 'HTML' format
 but the text is a separate part for e-mail readers that don't understand
 HTML. We can't assume that all valid HTML is XML so we have to escape all of
 the HTML ... or use a CDATA section

]]></mime:Body>
 </MIME>
 <MIME>
 <Content-Type charset="iso-8859-1">text/html</Content-Type>
 <Content-transfer-encoding>binary</Content-transfer-encoding>
 <mime:BODY xmlns="">
 <![CDATA[<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN">
 <HTML><HEAD>
 <META content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-8859-1" =
 http-equiv=3DContent-Type>
 <META content=3D'"MSHTML 5.00.0910.1309"' name=3DGENERATOR></HEAD>
 <BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff>
 Here is the text of the message ... its being =
 transmitted in=20
 'HTML' format but the text is a separate part for e-mail readers that =
 don't=20
 understand  HTML. We can't assume that all valid HTML is XML so we =
 have to=20
 escape all of the HTML ... or use a CDATA=20
 section         =20
 </BODY></HTML>]]></mime:Body>
 </MIME>
 </Parts>
 </mime:Body>
 </MIME>

References
	RFC 822
	MIME
	XML 1.0
	XML Namespaces
	XSLT

Author Address

Jonathan Borden
	The Open Heathcare Group
	Floor 5, Liongate
	500 Boylston Street
	Boston MA 02110

jborden@mediaone.net