Open email attachment
Description
Downloads one attachment and exposes its decoded contents as a stream. Takes an attachment object from an email's attachments field — the server connection comes from the attachment itself. Wire the stream into Stream to string, Copy stream, or an HTTP request body. Branches on success/error.
When to use
Use Open email attachment to get at the bytes of a file someone emailed you: an invoice PDF, a CSV of orders, an image. Find emails already tells you what is attached — filename, content type, size — without transferring anything; this node is what fetches one attachment’s payload.
Get to an attachment by breaking an email and looping over its
attachments array with For each. Break the element to read its
fileName, contentType and inline flag so you can pick the one you
want, then wire that same element into this node.
Two things worth knowing about the metadata. fileName is nullable — a
part can be attached with no name at all — so run it through Default if
null before using it as a filename. And size is the transfer-encoded
octet count the server reports, which is roughly 4/3 of the real file size
for base64-encoded attachments; treat it as an estimate, not the byte count
you will get out of the stream.
Attachments are capped at 25 MiB. A larger one takes the Error branch rather than arriving truncated.
Pins
Input pins
| Pin | Type | Default | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attachment | Email attachment | — | An attachment object from an email's `attachments` field (Break an email, then loop over the array). It carries the folder, message UID, MIME part path and server connection it came from, so this node needs no credentials. |
Output pins
| Pin | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Content | Input stream | The attachment's decoded bytes — base64 and quoted-printable are already undone, so this is the file as it would land on disk. Wire it into Stream to string for text, or straight into an HTTP request body or Copy stream to forward it without materialising it as a string. |
Execution pins
| Pin | Direction |
|---|---|
| In | Input |
| Success | Output |
| Error | Output |
Example
File every PDF invoice onto an SFTP server. After Find emails and For each,
Break the element and pass its Attachments into a second For each. Inside
it, Break the attachment and Branch on whether contentType equals
application/pdf. On the true path, wire the attachment into Open email
attachment, then Copy stream into an FTP upload — the bytes never become a
string, so a 20 MB scan streams straight through.