NAME¶
Mail::Box-Overview - objects used by Mail::Box
DESCRIPTION¶
Introduction¶
The MailBox package is a suite of classes for accessing and managing email
folders in a folder-independent manner. This package is an alternative to the
"Mail::Folder" and "MIME::*" packages. It abstracts the
details of messages, message storage, and message threads, while providing
better performance than older mail packages. It is meant to provide an
object-oriented toolset for all kinds of e-mail applications, under which Mail
User-Agents (MUA) and mail filtering programs.
This package is modular --parts of it can be used independently of the rest. For
example, the Mail::Box::Manager can automatically determine that a folder is
in Mbox format and return an object of the Mail::Box::Mbox class, or the user
program can bypass the manager and create Mail::Box::Mbox objects directly.
Similarly, if the user program is only manipulating a single message, a
Mail::Message.
The Mail::Box package has special features to help MUA's access folder data
quickly in random order. You will not really benefit (neither slower) if you
need the full folder sequentially.
You may want to have a look at the sample scripts in the "scripts"
directory.
The class relations¶
Mail::Box::Manager objects play a central role in any program which is built
with MailBox. Each program will create one manager, and then open folders via
that manager. Besides folders, the manager can also be used to discover
message threads: sequences of messages with their follow-ups.
<has-a> Mail::Box::Mbox
Mail::Box::Manager <---------* (Mail::Box::MH)
^ : (Mail::Box::Maildir)
| (maintains) (Mail::Box::POP3)
| :
| :
`---------------------* Mail::Box::Thread::Manager
(<has-a>)
Each folder maintains a list of messages. Much effort is made to hide
differences between folder types and kinds of messages. Your program can be
used for MBOX, MH, Maildir, and POP3 folders with no change at all (as long as
you stick to the rules).
Mail::Box::Mbox <-----------* Mail::Box::Mbox::Message
^ <has-a> ^
| <isa> | <isa>
| |
Mail::Box ............. Mail::Box::Message
^
| <isa>
|
Mail::Message
/ \
<has-a>
/ \
Mail::Message Mail::Message
::Body ::Head
The situation for MH and Maildir folders is a little more complicated, because
they have an extra intermediate level of abstraction: Mail::Box::Dir. The POP3
folder has an intermediate Mail::Box::Net.
In the future, when more Mbox-like folder types get implemented, there may be a
Mail::Box::File level too. The following is also true for the mail boxes
MB::MH::Message MB::POP3::Message
\ MB::Maildir::Message /
\ / /
\ / MB::Mbox::Message /
\ / | /
MB::Dir::Message | MB::Net::Message
\ | /
\ | /
MB::Message
|
|
Mail::Message
The Manager¶
The mailbox manager Mail::Box::Manager encapsulates folder management issues. It
maintains a set of open mail folders (mailboxes), and provides methods for
opening and closing them, efficiently moving messages between folders, and
efficiently appending messages to folders. It contains Mail::Box objects which
may be of different types. Most folder types can be detected automatically.
The main manager also manages message-thread detector objects, and informs them
when the contents of a folder have changed. This manager class is the only one
you instantiate yourself: objects of all other classes will be provided by
your folder manager.
You are strongly advised to use this object, but you can often do without it and
open a specific folder-type directly.
The Messages¶
- Mail::Message
- A base class that defines an interface for manipulating the head and body
of a message. There are various header object types
(Mail::Message::Head's) and a bunch of body object types
(Mail::Message::Body's).
The Mail::Message::Construct package is loaded when more complex tasks have
to be performed on messages, like creating replies, bounces, or a forward
message. These functionalities are described and implemented in the
::Construct file, but are automatically added to the Mail::Message
namespace when used.
Message types which are foreign to MailBox can be used in the MailBox
environment: there are some converters implemented via
Mail::Message::Convert. Particularly the popular Mail::Internet and
MIME::Entity are supported.
- Mail::Box::Message
- An abstract base class which defines an interface for mail messages which
are stored in any folder. It inherits from Mail::Message, and adds the
basic idea of location to a message.
- Mail::Message::Body
- This is the base class for all message bodies. It describes what you can
do with any kind of body. The body types differ on the way how the keep
the body content during the run of your program.
One special case of the body types is the Mail::Message::Body::Multipart,
which contains a set of Mail::Message::Part objects. These are just like
normal messages, except that they are contained in an other message. The
Mail::Message::Body::Nested body type is comparible, but contains only one
message: they are used for "message/rfc822" message encodings.
When needed, the functionality of the body objects is extended with
Mail::Message::Body::Construct and Mail::Message::Body::Encode. The former
package implements things like concatenation, the later controls message
encoding and decoding. In the current implementation this is limited to
transfer encodings (implemented in the Mail::Message::TransferEnc
packages). Automatic character and mime recodings are on the
wish-list.
- Mail::Message::Head
- The header for a single message. Maintains a set of Mail::Message::Field
objects, each containing one header line. Fields are the only objects
which have no logging and tracing facilities, purely for reasons of
performance.
The header object has three sub-classes: the Mail::Message::Head::Complete
version knows all lines for sure, Mail::Message::Head::Subset maintains an
unknown subset of lines, and the Mail::Message::Head::Delayed has no lines
yet but knows where to get them.
The latter two will automatically get the missing header lines from the
mailbox files when needed, and so transform into a "::Complete"
header. It is fully transparent to the user of MailBox in which shape the
header really is on the moment.
The Folder types¶
- Mail::Box
- A base class that defines a standard interface for mail boxes which is
independent of mailbox type. Objects of this class contain a
Mail::Box::Locker and a list of Mail::Box::Message objects.
- Mail::Box::Dir
- The base class for all folders which use a directory organization: each
message is a separate entity (file) grouped in a directory. Each
Mail::Box::Dir::Message represents one message, one such entity.
- Mail::Box::Net
- The base class for all folders which have the messages outside direct
reach of the MailBox library, for instance on a remote system, or in a
database.
- Mail::Box::Mbox
- This class derives from Mail::Box, and implements its interface for
mbox-style folders. It maintains a set of Mail::Box::Mbox::Message
objects, which are derived from a Mail::Box::Message.
Mbox-style folders have one file containing multiple messages per folder.
When folders get large, access tends to get slow.
- Mail::Box::MH
- This class derives from Mail::Box::Dir, and implements its interface for
MH-style folders. It maintains a set of Mail::Box::MH::Message objects,
which are derived from a Mail::Box::Dir::Message.
MH-style folders are represented by a directory, where each message is
stored in a separate file. The message files are sequentially numbered. It
is fast to open one single message, but hard to get an overview.
- Mail::Box::MH::Index
- The base class for MH mailbox indexes which provides methods for reading,
writing, and managing message indexes. These indexes are used to speed-up
access to directory based folders.
- Mail::Box::MH::Labels
- Also for efficiency reasons, a separate file is maintained which contains
flags about the messages. This file for instance lists new files. This
way, the MH message files do not have to be opened to find that out.
- Mail::Box::Maildir
- Like the MH folder type, this class derives from Mail::Box::Dir. It
implements its interface for Maildir-style folders. It maintains a set of
Mail::Box::Maildir::Message objects, which are derived from a
Mail::Box::Dir::Message.
- Mail::Box::POP3
- Implements the POP3 protocol based on Mail::Box::Net. The
Mail::Transport::POP3 implementation handles the protocol details. In this
kind of folders, you can only read and delete messages.
Various Other Classes¶
- Mail::Box::Thread::Manager
- Maintains a set of message-threads over one or more folders. A
message-thread is a start message with all the replies on it. And the
replies on replies, and so on. This object is used to construct the thread
for a set of open folders.
This object maintains linked lists of Mail::Box::Thread::Node objects.
Mail::Message::Dummy's fill-up some holes.
- Mail::Box::Locker
- Provides a folder locking interface which is inherited by the Mail::Box
class. Currently it supports dot-file locking ("filename.lock"),
flock filehandle locking, and locking over NFS. Each is implemented in a
separate class. A multi-locker, using a set of lock-methods at the same
time is also available.
- Mail::Box::Search
- The set of search packages implement various search techniques in an
uniformal way. Although implementing your own search algorithm is simple
in general, in practice multiparts, encodings, and mime-types complicate
things.
- Mail::Box::Parser
- The parser reads messages, and transforms them into data-structures such
that the content of header and body can be used within the program. The
first parser is implemented in pure Perl. A second parser is under
development, and will written in C, to gain speed.
- Mail::Box::Tie
- Provides hash (Mail::Box::Tie::HASH) or array tied (Mail::Box::Tie::ARRAY)
access to any mail folder derived from Mail::Box. This beautifies your
code in some applications.
- Mail::Transport
- Various ways of sending and receiving messages are implemented. Sending is
possible via external programs, like "mail", "Mailx",
"sendmail", or autonomously with direct SMTP. Receiving is
currently only implemented via POP3.
- Mail::Reporter
- A debugging and logging class which is inherited by most of the Mail::
modules. For each object, you can say what log and error reports must be
kept or directly presented to the user. This way you can decide to have
Mail::Box report about problems, or do it all yourself.
All classes are written to be extensible.
SEE ALSO¶
This module is part of Mail-Box distribution version 2.117, built on August 24,
2014. Website:
http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/
LICENSE¶
Copyrights 2001-2014 by [Mark Overmeer]. For other contributors see ChangeLog.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself. See
http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html