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Special Characters Encoding Example

This example demonstrates how the Nylas Python SDK correctly handles special characters (accented letters, unicode characters) in email subjects and message bodies.

The Problem

Previously, when sending emails with large attachments (>3MB), special characters in the subject line would be incorrectly encoded. For example:

  • Intended Subject: "De l'idée à la post-prod, sans friction"
  • What Recipients Saw: "De l’idée à la post-prod, sans friction"

This issue occurred because the SDK was using json.dumps() with the default ensure_ascii=True parameter when creating multipart/form-data requests for large attachments.

The Solution

The SDK now uses json.dumps(request_body, ensure_ascii=False) to preserve UTF-8 characters correctly in the JSON payload, ensuring that special characters are displayed properly in recipient inboxes.

What This Example Demonstrates

  1. Small Messages - Sending messages with special characters (no attachments)
  2. Large Messages - Sending messages with special characters AND large attachments (>3MB)
  3. Drafts - Creating drafts with special characters
  4. International Support - Handling various international character sets

Usage

Prerequisites

  1. Install the SDK in development mode:

    cd /path/to/nylas-python
pip install -e .

  2. Set up environment variables:

    export NYLAS_API_KEY="your_api_key"
export NYLAS_GRANT_ID="your_grant_id"
export RECIPIENT_EMAIL="recipient@example.com"

Run the Example

python examples/special_characters_demo/special_characters_example.py

Test Coverage

This fix is covered by comprehensive tests:

# Test the core fix in file_utils
pytest tests/utils/test_file_utils.py::TestFileUtils::test_build_form_request_with_special_characters

# Test message sending with special characters
pytest tests/resources/test_messages.py::TestMessage::test_send_message_with_special_characters_in_subject
pytest tests/resources/test_messages.py::TestMessage::test_send_message_with_special_characters_large_attachment

# Test draft creation with special characters
pytest tests/resources/test_drafts.py::TestDraft::test_create_draft_with_special_characters_in_subject
pytest tests/resources/test_drafts.py::TestDraft::test_create_draft_with_special_characters_large_attachment

Supported Character Sets

The SDK correctly handles:

  • French: é, è, ê, à, ù, ç, œ
  • Spanish: ñ, á, í, ó, ú, ¿, ¡
  • German: ä, ö, ü, ß
  • Portuguese: ã, õ, â, ê
  • Italian: à, è, é, ì, ò, ù
  • Russian: Cyrillic characters
  • Japanese: Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji
  • Chinese: Simplified and Traditional characters
  • Emoji: 🎉 🎊 🥳 and many more
  • Special symbols: €, £, ¥, ©, ®, ™

Technical Details

The Bug

When using multipart/form-data encoding (for large attachments), the message payload was serialized as:

message_payload = json.dumps(request_body)  # Default: ensure_ascii=True

This caused special characters to be escaped as unicode sequences:

{"subject": "De l\u2019id\u00e9e"}

The Fix

The payload is now serialized as:

message_payload = json.dumps(request_body, ensure_ascii=False)

This preserves the actual UTF-8 characters:

{"subject": "De l'idée"}

The multipart/form-data Content-Type header correctly specifies UTF-8 encoding, ensuring email clients display the characters properly.

Related Files

  • Core Fix: nylas/utils/file_utils.py - Line 70
  • Tests: tests/utils/test_file_utils.py, tests/resources/test_messages.py, tests/resources/test_drafts.py
  • Example: examples/special_characters_demo/special_characters_example.py

Impact

✅ Before Fix: Special characters in subjects were garbled when sending emails with large attachments
✅ After Fix: All special characters are correctly preserved and displayed

The fix ensures backwards compatibility - all existing code continues to work without changes.