Email Service Issue

Question

I am getting below error while sending an email to the mail address generated in the email service

test@k-2jdla25gm4keaulec1vyjtpuyozqqprsn0mnie0kqwew3z3fmz.28-1glq6eac.ap2.apex.salesforce.com (Undelivered): 554 The apex class CreateContactFrmEmail failed due to: System.NullPointerException: Attempt to de-reference a null object.

class

/**
 * Email services are automated processes that use Apex classes
 * to process the contents, headers, and attachments of inbound
 * email.
 */
global class CreateContactFrmEmail implements Messaging.InboundEmailHandler {

    global Messaging.InboundEmailResult handleInboundEmail(Messaging.InboundEmail email,
    Messaging.InboundEnvelope envelope) {

        Messaging.InboundEmailResult result = new Messaging.InboundEmailresult();

        String subToCompare = 'Create Contact';

        if(email.subject.equalsIgnoreCase(subToCompare))
        {
            Contact c = new Contact();
            c.LastName = email.plainTextBody;
            insert c;

                // Save attachments, if any
            for (Messaging.Inboundemail.TextAttachment tAttachment : email.textAttachments) {
            Attachment attachment = new Attachment();

            attachment.Name = tAttachment.fileName;
            attachment.Body = Blob.valueOf(tAttachment.body);
            attachment.ParentId = c.Id;
            insert attachment;
            }

            //Save any Binary Attachment
            for (Messaging.Inboundemail.BinaryAttachment bAttachment : email.binaryAttachments) {
            Attachment attachment = new Attachment();

            attachment.Name = bAttachment.fileName;
            attachment.Body = bAttachment.body;
            attachment.ParentId = c.Id;
            insert attachment;
            }
        }
        result.success = true;
        return result;
    }
}

Not sure what the issue is.

Answer 1

Normally you can use a for loop on a empty list and nothing bad happens. Unfortunately this isn't the case for either binary attachments or plain text attachments in an email handler class. To use those in a for loop you first need to check that there are attachments. If you add this before you for loop it should be fixed:

if (email.binaryAttachments != null && email.binaryAttachments.size() > 0) {

If you'd like some more information on email handler classes check this introduction out: http://blog.jeffdouglas.com/2010/03/12/writing-an-inbound-email-service-for-salesforce-com/