NAME

Mail::Transport - base class for message transmission

CLASS HIERARCHY

Mail::Transport
is a Mail::Reporter

SYNOPSIS

my $message = Mail::Message->new(...);
$message->send;
$message->send(via => 'sendmail');

my $sender = Mail::Transport::SMTP->new(...);
$sender->send($message);

DESCRIPTION

Organize sending of Mail::Message objects to the destinations as specified in the header. The Mail::Transport module is capable to autodetect which of the following modules work on your system:

  • Mail::Transport::Sendmail

    Use sendmail to process and deliver the mail. This requires the sendmail program to be installed on your system.

  • Mail::Transport::Qmail

    Use qmail-inject to distribute the message.

  • Mail::Transport::SMTP

    In this case, Perl is handling mail transport on its own. This is less desired but more portable than sending with sendmail or qmail.

    The advantage is that this sender is environment independent, and easier to configure. However, there is no daemon involved which means that your program will wait until the message is delivered, and the message is lost when your program is interrupted during delivery (which may take hours to complete).

  • Mail::Transport::Mailx

    Use the external mail, mailx, or Mail programs to send the message. Usually, the result is poor, because some versions of these programs do not support MIME headers.

METHOD INDEX

Methods prefixed with an abbreviation are described in Mail::Reporter (MR).

The general methods for Mail::Transport objects:

MR errors                            MR reportAll [LEVEL]
MR log [LEVEL [,STRINGS]]               send MESSAGE, OPTIONS
   new OPTIONS                       MR trace [LEVEL]
MR report [LEVEL]                       trySend MESSAGE, OPTIONS

The extra methods for extension writers:

MR AUTOLOAD                          MR logPriority LEVEL
MR DESTROY                           MR logSettings
   findBinary NAME [, DIRECTOR...    MR notImplemented
MR inGlobalDestruction                  putContent MESSAGE, FILEHAN...

METHODS

new OPTIONS
OPTION            DESCRIBED IN       DEFAULT
log               Mail::Reporter     'WARNINGS'
trace             Mail::Reporter     'WARNINGS'
via               Mail::Transport    'smtp'
proxy             Mail::Transport    undef
  • proxy => PATH

    The name of the proxy software (the mail handler). This must be the name (preferable the absolute path) of your mail delivery software.

  • via => CLASS|NAME

    Which CLASS (extending Mail::Transport) will transport the data. Some predefined NAMEs avoid long class names: mail and mailx are handled by the Mail::Transport::Mailx module, sendmail belongs to ::Sendmail, and smtp is implemented in ::SMTP.

send MESSAGE, OPTIONS

Transmit the MESSAGE, which may be anything what can be coerced into a Mail::Message, so including Mail::Internet and MIME::Entity messages. It returns true when the transmission was succesfully completed.

Some extensions to Mail::Transport may offer OPTIONS, but at least the following are supported:

OPTIONS      DESCRIBED IN              DEFAULT
interval     Mail::Transport           30
retry        Mail::Transport           undef
  • interval => SECONDS

    Retry to send the message every so many SECONDS, until transmission is successful or the number of retries is reached. The number must be larger than 0.

  • retry => NUMBER|undef

    The number of retries before the sending will fail. If undef, the number of retries is unlimited.

trySend MESSAGE, OPTIONS

Try to send the message. This will return true if successful, and false in case some problems where detected. The $? contains the exit status of the command which was started.

METHODS for extension writers

putContent MESSAGE, FILEHANDLE, OPTIONS

Print the content of the MESSAGE to the FILEHANDLE.

OPTIONS           DESCRIBED IN         DEFAULT
body_only         Mail::Transport      <false>
undisclosed       Mail::Transport      <false>
  • body_only => BOOLEAN

    Print only the body of the message, not the whole.

  • undisclosed => BOOLEAN

    Do not print the Bcc and Resent-Bcc lines. Default false, which means that they are printed.

findBinary NAME [, DIRECTORIES]

Look for a binary with the specified NAME in the directories which are defined to be safe. The list of standard directories is followed by the optional DIRECTORIES. The full pathname is returned.

You may specify a proxy option, which specifies the absolute name of the binary to be used.

SEE ALSO

Mail::Box-Overview

For support and additional documentation, see http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/

AUTHOR

Mark Overmeer (mailbox@overmeer.net). All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

VERSION

This code is beta, version 2.013.

Copyright (c) 2001-2002 Mark Overmeer. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.