When will [MFMailComposeViewController canSendMail] return NO

Question

My iPhone app is using the MFMailComposeViewController class to send an in-app email with an attachment. The app will only attempt to display the mail composer dialog if the "canSendMail" method of class MFMailComposeViewController returns true (YES). Specifically, if the following method returns YES, it shows the mail composer, otherwise the user is presented with an error alert dialog stating that there are no email accounts set up on the device:

- (BOOL)canDeviceSendEmail
{
    Class mailClass = (NSClassFromString(@"MFMailComposeViewController"));
    return mailClass != nil && [mailClass canSendMail];
}

A team of testers have reported that they get this error alert dialog, even when email accounts are set up on the device. The tester used an iPhone 3G with OS 3.1.3. Therefore the MFMailComposeViewController class must have existed, and the "canSendMail" method must have returned NO.

My question is therefore: apart from the case when there are no email accounts set up on the device, in what other circumstances can the "canSendMail" method return NO?

~ Thanks

Answer 1

You can't be certain that MFMailComposeViewController must have existed because your method doesn't discriminate between MFMailComposeViewController not existing and [MFMailComposeViewController canSendMail] returning NO.

What iPhone OS you're testing on is not relevant; what version of the iPhone SDK your application links against is what determines whether MFMailComposeViewController will be available at runtime. If you want that class, you need to build with SDK 3.0 or later.

Answer 2

For +canSendMail to return YES the default account must be set-up for sending emails.

(Internally, +[MFMailComposeViewController canSendMail] calls +[MailAccountProxy defaultMailAccountForDelivery], which finds the first mail account being -isDefaultDeliveryAccount.)

Answer 3

Did you include the Messaging Framework? I had a similar issue once and it was only because I forgot to add the correct framework to the XCode project.

Answer 4

If at least one email account is enabled on the device, the following call should return YES:

[MFMailComposeViewController canSendMail]

Conversely, if all accounts are disabled/removed, it will return NO.