Trigger email in DataPower

Posted Sep 30, 2024 Updated Oct 21, 2024

By Aditya Singh

2 min read

Hello Tech Enthusiasts 👋,

In this article, we’ll talk about how we can trigger email in DataPower. To trigger, we can either use 1) log-target, 2) url-open xslt. I’ll guide how we can use both the methods. Before beginning, regardless of the method chosen, we will need the following details:

SMTP Server host/IP,
SMTP Server port,
SMTP Server authentication credentials if used,
SMTP Server TLS enabled or disabled,
Recipient email address.
From email address. This is important as many SMTP server would reject is incoming email domain isn’t recognized.

To enable the test, I’m using free public smtp server : mailtrap

Through log-target

The log-target method is fairly straight forward.

1). For test purpose, I’m creating a new log-category ‘testsmtp’. 2). Next create log-target object and configure the details as below 👇:

smtp-log-target-main-tab

3). Add log-catagory to event Subscription tab

smtp-log-target-event-subscription-tab

If SMTP server needs TLS and Username/Password authentication, we would need to update default user-agent.

4). Create a new password-alias object (hardcoding password is deprecated) and create new Basic Auth Policy in default user-agent as below 👇:

user-agent-auth-tab

5). Add SMTP Client policy in default user-agent tab and ensure to check STARTTLS and Authentication options:

user-agent-smtp-client-auth-tab

To test, go to troubleshooting and ‘Generate Log Event’ as below 👇:

generate-log-event-troubleshooting

Message Received in email as :

email-confirmation-logtarget

In XSLT, we can trigger log category using dp:type=”smtptest” in . Refer [xsl:message](https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/datapower-gateway/10.5.x?topic=extensions-xslmessage).

url-open xslt

In this solution, we’re calling SMTP server within a service (here I’m using mpgw, but applicable for any of the service). To call, we’ll use the most common DataPower extension element : dp:url-open. The smtp endpoint url needs to be dpsmtp//. Ensure don’t use smtp as that’s now deprecated at the time of this article.

For demo purpose, I’m using loopback service to demonstrate url-open.

1). - Create a mpgw and add http/https front-side handler, processing policy and single rule with loopback variable (var://service/mpgw/skip-backside = 1)

2). Upload following xslt in the file-management and refer it using processing action (Transform using XSLT)

  
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:dp="http://www.datapower.com/extensions" xmlns:dpconfig="http://www.datapower.com/param/config" xmlns:date="http://exslt.org/dates-and-times" extension-element-prefixes="dp" exclude-result-prefixes="dp dpconfig date" version="1.0">

<xsl:template match="/*">
<xsl:variable name="log-message">
  <MessageBody>
    <Date>
      <xsl:value-of select="date:date()" />
    </Date>
    <Time>
      <xsl:value-of select="date:time()" />
    </Time>
    <Domain>
      <xsl:value-of select="dp:variable('var://service/domain-name')" />
    </Domain>
    <TransactionID>
      <xsl:value-of select="dp:variable('var://service/transaction-id')" />
    </TransactionID>
  </MessageBody>
</xsl:variable>
  <dp:url-open target="dpsmtp://live.smtp.mailtrap.io:587/?To=xxxx@abc.com&amp;From=demoemail@demomailtrap.com&amp;Subject=Demo-Email" response="responsecode">This is sample message.
  <xsl:copy-of select="$log-message"/></dp:url-open>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>