NAME¶
Mail::Internet - manipulate email messages
SYNOPSIS¶
use Mail::Internet;
my $msg = Mail::Internet->new(\*STDIN);
DESCRIPTION¶
This package implements reading, creating, manipulating, and writing email
messages. Sometimes, the implementation tries to be too smart, but in the
general case it works as expected.
If you start writing a
new application, you should use the Mail::Box
distribution, which has more features and handles messages much better
according to the RFCs. See <
http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/>. You may
also chose MIME::Entity, to get at least some multipart support in your
application.
METHODS¶
Constructors¶
- $obj->dup()
- Duplicate the message as a whole. Both header and body will
be deep-copied: a new Mail::Internet object is returned.
- $obj->extract(ARRAY-of-LINES)
- Extract header and body from an ARRAY of message lines.
Requires an object already created with new(), which contents will
get overwritten.
- $obj->new([ARG], [OPTIONS])
- Mail::Internet->new([ARG], [OPTIONS])
- ARG is optional and may be either a file descriptor
(reference to a GLOB) or a reference to an array. If given the new object
will be initialized with headers and body either from the array of read
from the file descriptor.
The Mail::Header::new() OPTIONS "Modify",
"MailFrom" and "FoldLength" may also be given.
-Option--Default
Body []
Header undef
- Body => ARRAY-of-LINES
- The value of this option should be a reference to an array
which contains the lines for the body of the message. Each line should be
terminated with "\n" (LF). If Body is given then
"Mail::Internet" will not attempt to read the body from
"ARG" (even if it is specified).
- Header => Mail::Header
- The value of this option should be a Mail::Header object.
If given then "Mail::Internet" will not attempt to read a mail
header from "ARG", if it was specified.
- $obj->read(FILEHANDLE)
- Read a message from the FILEHANDLE into an already existing
message object. Better use new() with the FILEHANDLE as first
argument.
Accessors¶
- $obj->body([BODY])
- Returns the body of the message. This is a reference to an
array. Each entry in the array represents a single line in the message.
If BODY is given, it can be a reference to an array or an array, then
the body will be replaced. If a reference is passed, it is used directly
and not copied, so any subsequent changes to the array will change the
contents of the body.
- $obj->head()
- Returns the "Mail::Header" object which holds the
headers for the current message
Processing the message as a whole¶
- $obj->as_mbox_string([ALREADY_ESCAPED])
- Returns the message as a string in mbox format.
"ALREADY_ESCAPED", if given and true, indicates that
escape_from() has already been called on this object.
- $obj->as_string()
- Returns the message as a single string.
- $obj->print([FILEHANDLE])
- Print the header, body or whole message to file descriptor
FILEHANDLE. $fd should be a reference to a
GLOB. If FILEHANDLE is not given the output will be sent to STDOUT.
example:
$mail->print( \*STDOUT ); # Print message to STDOUT
- $obj->print_body([FILEHANDLE])
- Print only the body to the FILEHANDLE (default
STDOUT).
- $obj->print_header([FILEHANDLE])
- Print only the header to the FILEHANDLE (default
STDOUT).
Most of these methods are simply wrappers around methods provided by
Mail::Header.
- $obj->add(PAIRS-of-FIELD)
- The PAIRS are field-name and field-content. For each PAIR,
Mail::Header::add() is called. All fields are added after existing
fields. The last addition is returned.
- $obj->combine(TAG, [WITH])
- See Mail::Header::combine().
- $obj->delete(TAG, [TAGs])
- Delete all fields with the name TAG.
Mail::Header::delete() is doing the work.
- $obj->fold([LENGTH])
- See Mail::Header::fold().
- $obj->fold_length([TAG], [LENGTH])
- See Mail::Header::fold_length().
- $obj->get(TAG, [TAGs])
- In LIST context, all fields with the name TAG are returned.
In SCALAR context, only the first field which matches the earliest TAG is
returned. Mail::Header::get() is called to collect the data.
- $obj->header([ARRAY-of-LINES])
- See Mail::Header::header().
- $obj->replace(PAIRS-of-FIELD)
- The PAIRS are field-name and field-content. For each PAIR,
Mail::Header::replace() is called with INDEX 0. If a FIELD is
already in the header, it will be removed first. Do not specified the same
field-name twice.
Processing the body¶
- $obj->remove_sig([NLINES])
- Attempts to remove a users signature from the body of a
message. It does this by looking for a line equal to '-- ' within the last
"NLINES" of the message. If found then that line and all lines
after it will be removed. If "NLINES" is not given a default
value of 10 will be used. This would be of most use in auto-reply
scripts.
- $obj->sign(OPTIONS)
- Add your signature to the body. remove_sig() will
strip existing signatures first.
-Option --Default
File undef
Signature []
- File => FILEHANDLE
- Take from the FILEHANDLE all lines starting from the first
"--".
- Signature => STRING|ARRAY-of-LINES
- $obj->tidy_body()
- Removes all leading and trailing lines from the body that
only contain white spaces.
High-level functionality¶
- $obj->escape_from()
- It can cause problems with some applications if a message
contains a line starting with `From ', in particular when attempting to
split a folder. This method inserts a leading "`"'> on any
line that matches the regular expression "/^"*From/>
- $obj->nntppost([OPTIONS])
- Post an article via NNTP. Requires Net::NNTP to be
installed.
-Option--Default
Debug <false>
Host <required>
Port 119
- Debug => BOOLEAN
- Debug value to pass to Net::NNTP, see Net::NNTP
- Host => HOSTNAME|Net::NNTP object
- Name of NNTP server to connect to, or a Net::NNTP object to
use.
- Port => INTEGER
- Port number to connect to on remote host
- $obj->reply(OPTIONS)
- Create a new object with header initialised for a reply to
the current object. And the body will be a copy of the current message
indented.
The ".mailhdr" file in your home directory (if exists) will be
read first, to provide defaults.
-Option --Default
Exclude []
Indent '>'
Keep []
ReplyAll false
- Exclude => ARRAY-of-FIELDS
- Remove the listed FIELDS from the produced message.
- Indent => STRING
- Use as indentation string. The string may contain
"%%" to get a single "%", %f to get the first from
name, %F is the first character of %f, %l is the last name, %L its first
character, %n the whole from string, and %I the first character of each of
the names in the from string.
- Keep => ARRAY-of-FIELDS
- Copy the listed FIELDS from the original message.
- ReplyAll => BOOLEAN
- Automatically include all To and Cc addresses of the
original mail, excluding those mentioned in the Bcc list.
- $obj->send([TYPE, [ARGS...]])
- Send a Mail::Internet message using Mail::Mailer. TYPE and
ARGS are passed on to Mail::Mailer::new().
- $obj->smtpsend([OPTIONS])
- Send a Mail::Internet message using direct SMTP. to the
given ADDRESSES, each can be either a string or a reference to a list of
email addresses. If none of "To", <Cc> or "Bcc"
are given then the addresses are extracted from the message being sent.
The return value will be a list of email addresses that the message was sent
to. If the message was not sent the list will be empty.
Requires Net::SMTP and Net::Domain to be installed.
-Option --Default
Bcc undef
Cc undef
Debug <false>
Hello localhost.localdomain
Host $ENV{SMTPHOSTS}
MailFrom Mail::Util::mailaddress()
Port 25
To undef
- Bcc => ADDRESSES
- Cc => ADDRESSES
- Debug => BOOLEAN
- Debug value to pass to Net::SMPT, see
<Net::SMTP>
- Hello => STRING
- Send a HELO (or EHLO) command to the server with the given
name.
- Host => HOSTNAME
- Name of the SMTP server to connect to, or a Net::SMTP
object to use
If "Host" is not given then the SMTP host is found by attempting
connections first to hosts specified in $ENV{SMTPHOSTS}, a colon separated
list, then "mailhost" and "localhost".
- MailFrom => ADDRESS
- The e-mail address which is used as sender. By default,
Mail::Util::mailaddress() provides the address of the sender.
- Port => INTEGER
- Port number to connect to on remote host
- To => ADDRESSES
- $obj->unescape_from(())
- Remove the escaping added by escape_from().
SEE ALSO¶
This module is part of the MailTools distribution,
http://perl.overmeer.net/mailtools/.
AUTHORS¶
The MailTools bundle was developed by Graham Barr. Later, Mark Overmeer took
over maintenance without commitment to further development.
Mail::Cap by Gisle Aas <aas@oslonett.no>. Mail::Field::AddrList by Peter
Orbaek <poe@cit.dk>. Mail::Mailer and Mail::Send by Tim Bunce
<Tim.Bunce@ig.co.uk>. For other contributors see ChangeLog.
LICENSE¶
Copyrights 1995-2000 Graham Barr <gbarr@pobox.com> and 2001-2007 Mark
Overmeer <perl@overmeer.net>.
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