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MIME-tools-4.111
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/ MIME-tools

NAME

MIME-tools - modules for parsing (and creating!) MIME entities

SYNOPSIS

For coding examples, see the MIME::Tools module. This manpage is for installers.

CONTENTS

Modules in this toolkit

Module       DSLI   Description                                  Info
----------   ----   ------------------------------------------   ----
MIME::
::Body       adpO   Abstract message holder (file, scalar, etc.) ERYQ
::Decoder    bdpO   OO interface for decoding MIME messages      ERYQ
::Entity     bdpO   An extracted and decoded MIME entity         ERYQ
::Field::*   bdpO   Mail::Field subclasses for parsing fields    ERYQ
::Head       bdpO   A parsed MIME header (Mail::Header subclass) ERYQ
::Parser     bdpO   Parses streams to create MIME entities       ERYQ
::ParserBase bdpO   For building your own MIME parser            ERYQ
::ToolUtils  bdpO   Utilities for the MIME-tools kit             ERYQ
::Tools      bdpO   For configuring the MIME-tools library       ERYQ
::Words      bdpO   Decode encoded words in MIME headers         ERYQ

::IO         ****   DEPRECATED; now done via IO:: modules        ERYQ
::Latin1     ****   DEPRECATED; may be moved to Text::           ERYQ

Programs in this toolkit

mimeabuse   - try hard to break MIME parsing
mimedump    - dump out summary of the contents of a parsed MIME message
mimeencode  - encode a file
mimeexplode - explode one or more MIME messages
mimeprint   - parse a MIME stream, and print the parsed entity
mimesend    - send files via MIME mail, from the command line
mimetour    - tour the possible encodings

Layout of the distribution

./lib/MIME/         the MIME-tools classes
./Makefile.PL       the input to MakeMaker
./COPYING           terms and conditions for copying/using the software
./README            this file
./docs/             HTMLized documentation
./etc/              convenient copies of other modules you may need
./examples          sample executables
./t/*.t             the "make test" scripts
./testin/           files you can use for testing (as in "make test")
./testout/          the output of "make test"

REQUIREMENTS

You'll need Perl5.002 or better, but you should get 5.004 as soon as possible... sorry, but it's the first release I know of with a non-broken FileHandle->new_tmpfile method. It's extremely worth upgrading to if you're using MIME-tools.

You'll also need to obtain and install the following kits from the CPAN:

IO-stringy

This provides us with filehandle-like interfaces to scalars, and the ability to "wrap" foreign filehandles.

MIME-Base64 (2.04 or higher)

This kit contains MIME::Base64 and MIME::QuotedPrint, which perform the low-level MIME decoding. Get these from Gisle Aas' author directory. They are also reported to be in the LWP distribution.

MailTools (1.09 or higher)

This is Graham Barr's revamped set of Mail:: modules. Many of them are now superclasses of the MIME:: modules, and perform the core functionality of manipulating headers and fields.

For your convenience, possibly-old copies of the MIME:: modules are provided in the ./etc directory, of the distribution, but they are NOT installed for you during the installation procedure.

INSTALLATION

Pretty simple:

1. Gunzip and de-tar the distribution, and cd to the top level.
2. Type:      perl Makefile.PL
3. Type:      make                    # this step is optional
4. Type:      make test               # this step is optional
5. Type:      make install

Other interesting targets in the Makefile are:

make config     # to check if the Makefile is up-to-date
make clean      # delete local temp files (Makefile gets renamed)
make realclean  # delete derived files (including ./blib)

If you're installing this as a replacment for MIME-parser 1.x or earlier, please read the "Compatibility" notes.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

Copyright (c) 1996 by Eryq. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See the COPYING file in the distribution for details.

AUTHOR

MIME-tools was created by:

  ___  _ _ _   _  ___ _     
 / _ \| '_| | | |/ _ ' /    Eryq (President, Zero G Inc.)
|  __/| | | |_| | |_| |     http://www.zeegee.com/
 \___||_|  \__, |\__, |__   eryq@zeegee.com
           |___/    |___/

For full credits, see the MIME::Tools module.

CHANGE LOG

Future plans

  • Dress up mimedump and mimeexplode utilities to take cmd line options for directory, environment vars (MIMEDUMP_OUTPUT, etc.).

  • Make it even easier to compose and send MIME messages.

Current events

Version 4.111 *

Clean build/test on Win95 using 5.004. Whew.

Version 4.110 *

Added make_multipart() and make_singlepart() in MIME::Entity.

Improved handling/saving of preamble/epilogue.

Version 4.109 *
Overall

Major version shift to 4.x accompanies numerous structural changes, and the deletion of some long-deprecated code. Many apologies to those who are inconvenienced by the upgrade.

MIME::IO deprecated. You'll see IO::Scalar, IO::ScalarArray, and IO::Wrap to make this toolkit work.

MIME::Entity deep code. You can now deep-copy MIME entities (except for on-disk data files).

Encoding/decoding

MIME::Latin1 deprecated, and 8-to-7 mapping removed. Really, MIME::Latin1 was one of my more dumber ideas. It's still there, but if you want to map 8-bit characters to Latin1 ASCII approximations when 7bit encoding, you'll have to request it explicitly. But use quoted-printable for your 8-bit documents; that's what it's there for!

7bit and 8bit "encoders" no longer encode. As per RFC-2045, these just do a pass-through of the data, but they'll warn you if you send bad data through.

MIME::Entity suggests encoding. Now you can ask MIME::Entity's build() method to "suggest" a legal encoding based on the body and the content-type. No more guesswork! See the "mimesend" example.

New module structure for MIME::Decoder classes. It should be easier for you to see what's happening.

New MIME decoders! Support added for decoding x-uuencode, and for decoding/encoding x-gzip64. You'll need "gzip" to make the latter work.

Quoted-printable back on track... and then some. The 'quoted-printable' decoder now uses the newest MIME::QuotedPrint, and amends its output with guideline #8 from RFC2049 (From/.). Thanks to Denis N. Antonioli for suggesting this.

Parsing

Preamble and epilogue are now saved. These are saved in the parsed entities as simple string-arrays, and are output by print() if there. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts for suggesting this.

The "multipart/digest" semantics are now preserved. Parts of digest messages have their mime_type() defaulted to "message/rfc822" instead of "text/plain", as per the RFC. Thanks to Carsten Heyl for suggesting this.

Output

Well-defined, more-complete print() output. When printing an entity, the output is now well-defined if the entity came from a MIME::Parser, even if using parse_nested_messages. See MIME::Entity for details.

You can prevent recommended filenames from being output. This possible security hole has been plugged; when building MIME entities, you can specify a body path but suppress the filename in the header. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts for suggesting this.

Bug fixes

Win32 installations should work. The binmode() calls should work fine on Win32 now. Thanks to numerous folks for their patches.

MIME::Head::add() now no longer downcases its argument. Thanks to Brandon Browning & Jason L. Tibbitts for finding this bug.

Version 3.204

Bug in MIME::Head::original_text fixed. Well, it took a while, but another bug surfaced from my transition from 1.x to 2.x. This method was, quite idiotically, sorting the header fields. Thanks, as usual, to Andreas Koenig for spotting this one.

MIME::ParserBase no longer defaults to RFC-1522-decoding headers. The documentation correctly stated that the default setting was to not RFC-1522-decode the headers. The code, on the other hand, was init'ing this parser option in the "on" position. This has been fixed.

MIME::ParserBase::parse_nested_messages reexamined. If you use this feature, please re-read the documentation. It explains a little more precisely what the ramifications are.

MIME::Entity tries harder to ensure MIME compliance. It is now a fatal error to use certain bad combinations of content type and encoding when "building", or to attempt to "attach" to anything that is not a multipart document. My apologies if this inconveniences anyone, but it was just too darn easy before for folks to create bad MIME, and gosh darn it, good libraries should at least try to protect you from mistakes.

The "make" now halts if you don't have the right stuff, provided your MakeMaker supports PREREQ_PM. See the "REQUIREMENTS" section for what you need to install this package. I still provide old courtesy copies of the MIME:: decoding modules. Thanks to Hugo van der Sanden for suggesting this.

The "make test" is far less chatty. Okay, okay, STDERR is evil. Now a "make test" will just give you the important stuff: do a "make test TEST_VERBOSE=1" if you want the gory details (advisable if sending me a bug report). Thanks to Andreas Koenig for suggesting this.

Version 3.203

No, there haven't been any major changes between 2.x and 3.x. The major-version increase was from a few more tweaks to get $VERSION to be calculated better and more efficiently (I had been using RCS version numbers in a way which created problems for users of CPAN::). After a couple of false starts, all modules have been upgraded to RCS 3.201 or higher.

You can now parse a MIME message from a scalar, an array-of-scalars, or any MIME::IO-compliant object (including IO:: objects.) Take a look at parse_data() in MIME::ParserBase. The parser code has been modified to support the MIME::IO interface. Thanks to fellow Chicagoan Tim Pierce (and countless others) for asking.

More sensible toolkit configuration. A new config() method in MIME::ToolUtils makes a lot of toolkit-wide configuration cleaner. Your old calls will still work, but with deprecation warnings.

You can now sign messages just like in Mail::Internet. See MIME::Entity for the interface.

You can now remove signatures from messages just like in Mail::Internet. See MIME::Entity for the interface.

You can now compute/strip content lengths and other non-standard MIME fields. See sync_headers() in MIME::Entity. Thanks to Tim Pierce for bringing the basic problem to my attention.

Many warnings are now silent unless $^W is true. That means unless you run your Perl with -w, you won't see deprecation warnings, non-fatal-error messages, etc. But of course you run with -w, so this doesn't affect you. :-)

Completed the 7-bit encodings in MIME::Latin1. We hadn't had complete coverage in the conversion from 8- to 7-bit; now we do. Thanks to Rolf Nelson for bringing this to my attention.

Fixed broken parse_two() in MIME::ParserBase. BTW, if your code worked with the "broken" code, it should still work. Thanks again to Tim Pierce for bringing this to my attention.

Version 2.14

Just a few bug fixes to improve compatibility with Mail-Tools 1.08, and with the upcoming Perl 5.004 release. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts III for reporting the problems so quickly.

Version 2.13
New features

Added RFC-1522-style decoding of encoded header fields. Header decoding can now be done automatically during parsing via the new decode() method in MIME::Head... just tell your parser object that you want to decode_headers(). Thanks to Kent Boortz for providing the idea, and the baseline RFC-1522-decoding code!

Building MIME messages is even easier. Now, when you use MIME::Entity's build() or attach(), you can also supply individual mail headers to set (e.g., -Subject, -From, -To).

Added Disposition to MIME::Entity's build() method. Thanks to Kurt Freytag for suggesting this feature.

An X-Mailer header is now output by default in all MIME-Entity-prepared messages, so any bad MIME we generate can be traced back to this toolkit.

Added purge() method to MIME::Entity for deleteing leftover files. Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts III for suggesting this feature.

Added seek() and tell() methods to built-in MIME::IO classes. Only guaranteed to work when reading! Thanks to Jason L. Tibbitts III for suggesting this feature.

When parsing a multipart message with apparently no boundaries, the error message you get has been improved. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for suggesting this.

Bug fixes

Patched over a Perl 5.002 (and maybe earlier and later) bug involving FileHandle::new_tmpfile. It seems that the underlying filehandles were not being closed when the FileHandle objects went out of scope! There is now an internal routine that creates true FileHandle objects for anonymous temp files. Thanks to Dragomir R. Radev and Zyx for reporting the weird behavior that led to the discovery of this bug.

MIME::Entity's build() method now warns you if you give it an illegal boundary string, and substitutes one of its own.

MIME::Entity's build() method now generates safer, fully-RFC-1521-compliant boundary strings.

Bug in MIME::Decoder's install() method was fixed. Thanks to Rolf Nelson and Nickolay Saukh for finding this.

Changed FileHandle::new_tmpfile to FileHandle->new_tmpfile, so some Perl installations will be happier. Thanks to Larry W. Virden for finding this bug.

Gave =over an arg of 4 in all PODs. Thanks to Larry W. Virden for pointing out the problems of bare =over's

Version 2.04

A bug in MIME::Entity's output method was corrected. MIME::Entity::print now outputs everything to the desired filehandle explicitly. Thanks to Jake Morrison for pointing out the incompatibility with Mail::Header.

Version 2.03

Fixed bug in autogenerated filenames resulting from transposed "if" statement in MIME::Parser, removing spurious printing of header as well. (Annoyingly, this bug is invisible if debugging is turned on!) Thanks to Andreas Koenig for bringing this to my attention.

Fixed bug in MIME::Entity::body() where it was using the bodyhandle completely incorrectly. Thanks to Joel Noble for bringing this to my attention.

Fixed MIME::Head::VERSION so CPAN:: is happier. Thanks to Larry Virden for bringing this to my attention.

Fixed undefined-variable warnings when dumping skeleton (happened when there was no Subject: line) Thanks to Joel Noble for bringing this to my attention.

Version 2.02

Stupid, stupid bugs in both BASE64 encoding and decoding were fixed. Thanks to Phil Abercrombie for locating them.

Version 2.01

Modules now inherit from the new Mail:: modules! This means big changes in behavior.

MIME::Parser can now store message data in-core. There were a lot of requests for this feature.

MIME::Entity can now compose messages. There were a lot of requests for this feature.

Added option to parse "message/rfc822" as a pseduo-multipart document. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for suggesting this.

Ancient history

Version 1.13

MIME::Head now no longer requires space after ":", although either a space or a tab after the ":" will be swallowed if there. Thanks to Igor Starovoitov for pointing out this shortcoming.

Version 1.12

Fixed bugs in parser where CRLF-terminated lines were blowing out the handling of preambles/epilogues. Thanks to Russell Sutherland for reporting this bug.

Fixed idiotic is_multipart() bug. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for noticing it.

Added untested binmode() calls to parser for DOS, etc. systems. No idea if this will work...

Reorganized the output_path() methods to allow easy use of inheritance, as per Achim Bohnet's suggestion.

Changed MIME::Head to report mime_type more accurately.

POSIX module no longer loaded by Parser if perl >= 5.002. Hey, 5.001'ers: let me know if this breaks stuff, okay?

Added unsupported ./examples directory.

Version 1.11

Converted over to using Makefile.PL. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for the much-needed kick in the pants...

Added t/*.t files for testing. Eeeeeeeeeeeh...it's a start.

Fixed bug in default parsing routine for generating output paths; it was warning about evil filenames if there simply were no recommended filenames. D'oh!

Fixed redefined parts() method in Entity.

Fixed bugs in Head where field name wasn't being case folded.

Version 1.10

A typo was causing the epilogue of an inner multipart message to be swallowed to the end of the OUTER multipart message; this has now been fixed. Thanks to Igor Starovoitov for reporting this bug.

A bad regexp for parameter names was causing some parameters to be parsed incorrectly; this has also been fixed. Thanks again to Igor Starovoitov for reporting this bug.

It is now possible to get full control of the filenaming algorithm before output files are generated, and the default algorithm is safer. Thanks to Laurent Amon for pointing out the problems, and suggesting some solutions.

Fixed illegal "simple" multipart test file. D'OH!

Version 1.9

No changes: 1.8 failed CPAN registration

Version 1.8.

Fixed incompatibility with 5.001 and FileHandle::new_tmpfile Added COPYING file, and improved README.