NAME¶
Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser - Perl extension to analyze bounce messages
SYNOPSIS¶
use Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser;
# $message is \*io or $fh or "entire\nmessage" or \@lines
my $bounce = eval { Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser->new($message); };
if ($@) {
# couldn't parse.
}
my @addresses = $bounce->addresses; # email address strings
my @reports = $bounce->reports; # Mail::Header objects
my $orig_message_id = $bounce->orig_message_id; # <ABCD.1234@mx.example.com>
my $orig_message = $bounce->orig_message; # Mail::Internet object
ABSTRACT¶
Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser analyzes RFC822 bounce messages and returns a
structured description of the addresses that bounced and the reason they
bounced; it also returns information about the original returned message
including the Message-ID. It works best with RFC1892 delivery reports, but
will gamely attempt to understand any bounce message no matter what MTA
generated it.
DESCRIPTION¶
Meng Wong wrote this for the Listbox v2 project; good mailing list managers
handle bounce messages so listowners don't have to. The best mailing list
managers figure out exactly what is going on with each subscriber so the
appropriate action can be taken.
parse¶
my $bounce = Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser->parse($message, \%arg);
OPTIONS. If you pass BounceParser->new(..., {log=>sub { ... }}) That will
be used as a logging callback.
NON-BOUNCES. If the message is recognizably a vacation autoresponse, or is a
report of a transient nonfatal error, or a spam or virus autoresponse, you'll
still get back a $bounce, but its "$bounce->is_bounce()" will
return false.
It is possible that some bounces are not really bounces; such as anything that
apears to have a 2XX status code. To include such non-bounces in the reports,
pass the option {report_non_bounces=>1}.
For historical reasons, "new" is an alias for the "parse"
method.
log¶
$bounce->log($messages);
If a logging callback has been given, the message will be passed to it.
is_bounce¶
if ($bounce->is_bounce) { ... }
This method returns true if the bounce parser thought the message was a bounce,
and false otherwise.
reports¶
Each $report returned by $bounce->
reports() is basically a
Mail::Header object with a few modifications. It includes the email address
bouncing, and the reason for the bounce.
Consider an RFC1892 error report of the form
Reporting-MTA: dns; hydrant.pobox.com
Arrival-Date: Fri, 4 Oct 2002 16:49:32 -0400 (EDT)
Final-Recipient: rfc822; bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host dumbo.pobox.com[208.210.125.24] said: 550
<bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com>: Nonexistent Mailbox
Each "header" above is available through the usual
get()
mechanism.
print $report->get('reporting_mta'); # 'some.host.com'
print $report->get('arrival-date'); # 'Fri, 4 Oct 2002 16:49:32 -0400 (EDT)'
print $report->get('final-recipient'); # 'rfc822; bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com'
print $report->get('action'); # "failed"
print $report->get('status'); # "5.0.0"
print $report->get('diagnostic-code'); # X-Postfix; ...
# BounceParser also inserts a few interpretations of its own:
print $report->get('email'); # 'bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com'
print $report->get('std_reason'); # 'user_unknown'
print $report->get('reason'); # host [199.248.185.2] said: 550 5.1.1 unknown or illegal user: somebody@uss.com
print $report->get('host'); # dumbo.pobox.com
print $report->get('smtp_code'); # 550
print $report->get('raw') || # the original unstructured text
$report->as_string; # the original structured text
Probably the two most useful fields are "email" and
"std_reason", the standardized reason. At this time BounceParser
returns the following standardized reasons:
user_unknown
over_quota
user_disabled
domain_error
spam
message_too_large
unknown
no_problemo
The "spam" standard reason indicates that the message bounced because
the recipient considered it spam.
(no_problemo will only appear if you set {report_non_bounces=>1})
If the bounce message is not structured according to RFC1892, BounceParser will
still try to return as much information as it can; in particular, you can
count on "email" and "std_reason" to be present.
addresses¶
Returns a list of the addresses which appear to be bouncing. Each member of the
list is an email address string of the form 'foo@bar.com'.
orig_message_id¶
If possible, returns the message-id of the original message as a string.
orig_message¶
If the original message was included in the bounce, it'll be available here as a
message/rfc822 MIME entity.
my $orig_message = $bounce->orig_message;
If only the original headers were returned in the text/rfc822-headers chunk,
they'll be available here as a Mail::Header entity.
orig_text¶
If the bounce message was poorly structured, the above two methods won't return
anything --- instead, you get back a block of text that may or may not
approximate the original message. No guarantees. Good luck.
CAVEATS¶
Bounce messages are generally meant to be read by humans, not computers. A
poorly formatted bounce message may fool BounceParser into spreading its net
too widely and returning email addresses that didn't actually bounce. Before
you do anything with the email addresses you get back, confirm that it makes
sense that they might be bouncing --- for example, it doesn't make sense for
the sender of the original message to show up in the addresses list, but it
could if the bounce message is sufficiently misformatted.
Still, please report all bugs!
FREE-FLOATING ANXIETY¶
Some bizarre MTAs construct bounce messages using the original headers of the
original message. If your application relies on the assumption that all
Message-IDs are unique, you need to watch out for these MTAs and program
defensively; before doing anything with the Message-ID of a bounce message,
first confirm that you haven't already seen it; if you have, change it to
something else that you make up on the spot, such as
"<antibogus-TIMESTAMP-PID-COUNT@LOCALHOST>".
BUGS¶
BounceParser assumes a sanely constructed bounce message. Input from the real
world may cause BounceParser to barf and die horribly when we violate one of
MIME::Entity's assumptions; this is why you should always call it inside an
eval { }.
TODO¶
Provide some translation of the SMTP and DSN error codes into English. Review
RFC1891 and RFC1893.
KNOWN TO WORK WITH¶
We understand bounce messages generated by the following MTAs / organizations:
Postfix
Sendmail
Exim
AOL
Yahoo
Hotmail
AOL's AirMail sender-blocking
Microsoft Exchange*
Qmail*
Novell Groupwise*
* Items marked with an asterisk currently may return incomplete information.
SEE ALSO¶
Used by http://listbox.com/ --- if you like BounceParser and you know it,
consider Listbox for your mailing list needs!
SVN repository and email list information at:
http://emailproject.perl.org/
RFC1892 and RFC1894
RANDOM OBSERVATION¶
Schwern's modules have the Alexandre Dumas property.
AUTHOR¶
Original author: Meng Weng Wong, <mengwong+bounceparser@pobox.com>
Current maintainer: Ricardo SIGNES, <rjbs@cpan.org>
Massive contributions to the 1.5xx series were made by William Yardley and
Michael Stevens. Ricardo mostly just helped out and managed releases.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
Copyright (C) 2003-2006, IC Group, Inc.
pobox.com permanent email forwarding with spam filtering
listbox.com mailing list services for announcements and discussion
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.
WITH A SHOUT OUT TO¶
coraline, Fletch, TorgoX, mjd, a-mused, Masque, gbarr,
sungo, dngor, and all the other hoopy froods on #perl