NAME

Email::Date - Find and Format Date Headers

SYNOPSIS

use Email::Date;

my $email = join '', <>;
my $date  = find_date($email);
print $date->ymd;

my $header = format_date($date->epoch);

Email::Simple->create(
    header => [
        Date => $header,
    ],
    body => '...',
);

DESCRIPTION

RFC 2822 defines the Date: header. It declares the header a required part of an email message. The syntax for date headers is clearly laid out. Stil, even a perfectly planned world has storms. The truth is, many programs get it wrong. Very wrong. Or, they don't include a Date: header at all. This often forces you to look elsewhere for the date, and hoping to find something.

For this reason, the tedious process of looking for a valid date has been encapsulated in this software. Further, the process of creating RFC compliant date strings is also found in this software.

Functions

find_date

my $time_piece = find_date $email;

find_date accepts an email message in any format Email::Abstract can understand. It looks through the email message and finds a date, converting it to a Time::Piece object.

format_date

my $date = format_date; # now
my $date = format_date( time - 60*60 ); # one hour ago

format_date accepts an epoch value, such as the one returned by time. It returns a string representing the date and time of the input, as specified in RFC 2822. If no input value is provided, the current value of time is used.

SEE ALSO

Email::Abstract, Time::Piece, Date::Parse, perl.

AUTHOR

Casey West, <casey@geeknest.com>.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 2004 Casey West.  All rights reserved.
This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.