Question

I have some code to add attachments to an email. I’m adding them via the Stream overload of the Attachment class constructor. The code to do it looks like this:

List<UploadedDocument> docs = DataBroker.GetUploadedDocs(Convert.ToInt32(HttpContext.Current.Session["offer_id"].ToString()));
//no need to keep this in session
HttpContext.Current.Session["offer_id"] = null;
int counter = 1;
foreach (UploadedDocument doc in docs)
{
    stream = new MemoryStream(doc.doc);
    attach = new Attachment(stream, "Attachment-" + counter.ToString());
    message.Attachments.Add(attach);              
}

Where doc.doc is a byte array. I want to properly dispose of each attachment and stream, but I can’t do it until the message has been sent, so I was thinking about just adding them to a List<Attachment> and List<Stream> and then iterating through and calling dispose.

Something like this:

List<Attachment> attachments;
List<Stream> streams;
//...
foreach(UploadedDocument doc in docs)
{
    stream = new MemoryStream(doc.doc);
    streams.Add(stream);
    attach = new Attachment(stream,"Name");
    attachments.Add(attach);
    message.Attachments.Add(attach);
}
//other processing
emailClient.Send(message);

if(attachments != null)
{
    foreach(Attachment attachment in attachments)
    {
        attachment.Dispose();
    }
}
if(streams != null)
{
    foreach(MemoryStream myStream in streams)
    {
        myStream.Dispose();
    }
}

But something tells me that won’t dispose them properly if there is still a reference floating around that hasn’t gotten garbage collected or something. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

The simplest way to handle this is to just call Dispose() on the MailMessage.

MailMessage.Dispose will automatically dispose all attachments, which in turn will close/Dispose() all of the underlying streams.

//other processing
emailClient.Send(message);
message.Dispose();  // Or just wrap this entire block in a using statement