NAME¶
mime-construct - construct and optionally mail MIME messages
SYNOPSIS¶
mime-construct switch...
Sorry, it's hard to provide a meaningful synopsis. See the examples.
DESCRIPTION¶
mime-construct constructs and (by default) mails MIME messages. It is
entirely driven from the command line, it is designed to be used by other
programs, or people who act like programs.
OPTIONS¶
Global Settings¶
- --debug
- Turn debugging on.
- --help
- Show the usage message and die.
- --output
- Don't mail the generated message, print it to stdout
instead. This loses --bcc info.
- --subpart
- Generate a subpart which can be used in another MIME
message, rather than a top-level MIME message itself. This turns on
--output and changes some internal semantics a bit. See the
examples.
- --version
- Print the version and exit successfully, if this is the
only arg. Otherwise, print the version and die.
Main Header¶
These arguments add text to the top-level header of the message, or control who
it gets sent to.
- --bcc address
- Add address to the recipient list. This doesn't
actually add anything to the header, of course. If you're not actually
mailing the message (if you use --output or --subpart)
--bcc will have no effect.
- --cc address
- Add an address to the Cc: list.
- --embedded-to
- Send the message to the recipients already listed in the
header, in addition to those given with --to, --cc, and
--bcc. This makes sense if you use the --header switch to
add your own To: or Cc:. In this case you probably don't
want to use --to or --cc because they would create new
headers rather than adding to the ones already in the message.
This switch passes the -t switch to sendmail (mime-construct
doesn't try to parse the headers you provide), so it doesn't really do
anything if you're not mailing the message.
- --header str
- Add arbitrary text to the header. The str can be
anything you like, including multiple lines. You can create invalid
messages this way. If you include a blank line in the str you'll
really screw up the message.
- --multipart str
- This specifies the multipart content type and options. The
default is "multipart/mixed". Don't include a
"boundary" setting, that's supplied by mime-construct.
It's okay if you specify the --multipart type but the message turns
out to be a single part, the type you supply will just be ignored.
- --prelude str
- This adds str to the multipart prelude text. If you
specify --prelude multiple times the strs will all be
concatenated.
There isn't any default for this text. It seems to me that nowadays adding
an explanation of MIME to the beginning of a message is like explaining
how to use a seat buckle to people who are riding in an airplane.
It's okay if you specify the --prelude but the message turns out to
be a single part, the prelude you supply will just be ignored.
- --subject str
- Specify the subject for the message.
- --to address
- Add an address to the To: list.
These switches control the per-part headers. If the message turns out not to be
multipart they actually add data to the top level header.
Each of these applies only to the next part output. After each part is output
they are reset to their default values. It doesn't make sense to use them
without a following part, so
mime-construct will sputter and die if you
try to do that.
- --attachment name
- This adds a "Content-Disposition: attachment"
header with the given name as the value of the "filename"
attribute. It's just a convenience, since mime-construct is often
used to send files as attachments.
Using --attachment name does not cause mime-construct
to read any data from the file called name! It just uses that name
in the header. The actual data which will go into this part of the message
comes from one of the regular part output switches (given below).
You might prefer to use the --file-attach switch, which does read
from the named file.
- --encoding type
- This specifies the type of encoding you want this part to
use. You normally shouldn't use this switch, though. If this switch isn't
used mime-construct will choose an appropriate encoding.
The data you supply mustn't be encoded already, mime-construct will
encode it according to the type you specify here. Valid encodings
are 7bit, 8bit, binary, quoted-printable, and
base64. It's easy to generate an illegal MIME message by specifying
the encoding yourself.
- --part-header str
- Add arbitrary text to the per-part header. The str
can be anything you like, including multiple lines. You can create invalid
messages this way. If you include a blank line in the str you'll
really screw up the message.
- --type type
- Specify the content type for this part. If you don't
specify a --type it defaults to "text/plain". The
type you supply can contain not only the type proper but also
options. The whole thing will just be plopped onto the end of
"Content-Type:" and stuck into the header.
You might prefer to use the --file-auto or --file-attach
switches, which set the --type automatically based on a file's
name.
Part Output¶
These switches add data to the body of the message. You use one of these for
each for each part of a multipart message (or just one of them if the message
isn't to be multipart).
- --file path
- --file-auto path
- --file-attach path
- --attach path
- --string str
- --body str
- Use the contents of the file path or the literal
string str as the body of this part.
--file-auto causes the Content-Type to be set based on the file's
name, if possible.
--file-attach does that and sets the --attachment name as
well.
Be sure to include the trailing newline on str unless there really
isn't supposed to be one. If you leave the trailing newline off the part
will have to be encoded in "base64" (because
"quoted-printable" has an artificial limitation which prevents
it from being able to encode such a data stream).
--attach is an alias for --file-attach, and --body is
an alias for --string.
- --subpart-file path
- --subpart-string str
- Use either the contents of path or str itself
as the body of this part, but treat it as a subpart. This means that the
data contains both some headers and some text. It also means that you
can't use --type or --encoding for this part.
Normally the path or str will have been generated by a
different invocation of mime-construct which was given the
--subpart switch.
Arguments to switches which take a file name (such as
--file and
--subpart-file) can have some magic. If there is no file with the
path supplied a regular Perl
open() is done on it. See
"EXAMPLES".
EXAMPLES¶
The examples assume that $nl contains a newline. The other variables used are I
hope self-explanatory.
Send a simple message.
mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject 'hi there' --string "$body"
Send a message which is read from stdin.
fortune | mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject fortune --file -
Send a plain text part and attach a file, setting the file's content type and
--attachment name automatically.
mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject "$file" \
--string "Here's the file I told you about.$nl" \
--file-attach "$file"
Most people think of attachments as multipart messages, but they don't have to
be. This generates a zip of all the files in the current directory and sends
them as an attachment but as a single part message.
zip -q - * |
mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject 'zipped directory' \
--attachment dir.zip --type application/zip --file -
You can use the full expressiveness of Perl's
open() when constructing
file names. Eg, you can run processes XXX bad examples, there's no file names
mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject "$subject" \
--string "Here are those two files you wanted.$nl" \
--type application/x-gzip --attachment file1.gz --file 'gzip -c file1 |' \
--type application/x-gzip --attachment file1.gz --file 'gzip -c file2 |'
or read from alternate file descriptors ("<&=4" to read from
file descriptor 4) or whatever. See perlopentut for a tutorial.
Here's an example of using a separate invocation of
mime-construct to
create a subpart. This creates a message which has two parts at the top level.
The first part is some text, the second part is a digest. The digest itself is
a multipart message which contains a number of message/rfc822 parts.
msg_args=
for msg in $msg_list
do
msg_args="$msg_args --type message/rfc822 --file $msg"
done
set fnord
for recip in $recip_list
do
set "$@" --bcc $recip
done
shift
mime-construct --subpart --multipart multipart/digest $msg_args |
mime-construct \
--header "To: Digest recipients:;$nl" \
--subject 'Foo digest' \
"$@" \
--file "$introduction" \
--subpart-file -
Here is how to send an encrypted messages (multipart/encrypted, as defined in
RFC 1847). You use
mime-construct "--subpart" to generate the
real message you want to send (which can be kind of MIME message -- non-text,
multi-part, what have you), then encrypt that and use another
mime-construct to contruct and send the multipart/encrypted message
which contains it.
enc_type=application/pgp-encrypted
enc_params="Version: 1$nl"
mime-construct --subpart --file body --file-auto image.jpg |
gpg --encrypt --armor -r "$recip" |
mime-construct --output \
--to "$recip" \
--subject "$subject" \
--multipart "multipart/encrypted; protocol=\"$enc_type\"" \
--type "$enc_type" \
--string "$enc_params" \
--type application/octet-stream \
--file -
BUGS¶
The body of the message is always held in memory, so you can expect problems if
you work with bodies which are large compared to the amount of memory you've
got.
AVAILABILITY¶
The code is licensed under the GNU GPL. Check
http://www.argon.org/~roderick/
for updated versions.
AUTHOR¶
Roderick Schertler <roderick@argon.org>