Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

FileAttachment.content_bytes does not return b64-encoded content.

Open
#1,556 1 comment 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
python
Domain
api

Research direction

Start with the FileAttachment model's content_bytes field and the attachment retrieval call in the reproduction. Compare the behavior between SDK versions 1.58.0 and 1.60.0, then run the provided b64decode validation against a retrieved attachment. Done means content_bytes can be passed to b64decode with validate=True as described.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

status:waiting-for-triage type:bug
Describe the bug

On attempt to b64decode the content_bytes of a file attachment the following error occurs:
binascii.Error: Only base64 data is allowed
The same test provided below passes with msgraph-sdk <= 1.58.0
The code comments still suggest b64-encoded content:

# The base64-encoded contents of the file.
content_bytes: Optional[bytes] = None
Expected behavior

FileAttachment.content_bytes returns b64-encoded data.

How to reproduce
from base64 import b64decode
from typing import cast

from azure.core.credentials import TokenCredential
from azure.identity import ClientSecretCredential
from msgraph import GraphServiceClient
from msgraph.generated.models.attachment import Attachment
from msgraph.generated.models.file_attachment import FileAttachment
from settings import settings

credentials = cast(
    TokenCredential,
    ClientSecretCredential(
        tenant_id=settings().microsoft_graph_tenant_id,
        client_id=settings().microsoft_graph_client_id,
        client_secret=settings().microsoft_graph_client_secret,
    ),
)
scopes = ["https://graph.microsoft.com/.default"]
client = GraphServiceClient(credentials, scopes)


async def get_mail_attachments(
    mailbox: str, mail_id: str
) -> list[Attachment]:
    response = (
        await client.users.by_user_id(mailbox)
        .messages.by_message_id(mail_id)
        .attachments.get()
    )
    attachments: list[Attachment] = response.value or []
    return attachments


async def test_attachments():
    attachments = await get_mail_attachments("my-mailbox", "my-mail-id")
    assert len(attachments) >= 1
    first_attachment = attachments[0]
    assert isinstance(first_attachment, FileAttachment)
    b64decode(first_attachment.content_bytes, validate=True)

SDK Version

1.60.0

Latest version known to work for scenario above?

1.58.0

Known Workarounds

No response

Debug output
Click to expand log ```
</details>


### Configuration

_No response_

### Other information

_No response_
Dominant language
Python
Stars
630
Forks
96
Avg merge
15h 20m
Merged PRs (30d)
3

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from microsoftgraph/msgraph-sdk-python

All issues in microsoftgraph/msgraph-sdk-python

Similar issues

More Python issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.