NAME

Mail::Builder - Easily create plaintext/html e-mail messages with attachments and inline images

SYNOPSIS

use Mail::Builder;

my $mail = Mail::Builder->new();

$mail->from('mightypirate@meele-island.mq','Guybrush Threepwood');
$mail->to->add('manuel.calavera@dod.mx','Manuel Calavera');
$mail->cc->add('glotis@dod.mx');
$mail->subject('Party at Sam\'s place');
$mail->htmltext('<h1>Party invitation</h1> ... ');
$mail->attachment->add('direction_samandmax.pdf');

# Send it with your favourite module (e.g. Email::Send)
my $mailer = Email::Send->new({mailer => 'Sendmail'})->send($mail->stringify);

# Or mess with MIME::Entity objects
my $mime = $mail->build_message;
$mime-> ....

DESCRIPTION

This module helps you to build correct e-mails with attachments, inline images, multiple recipients, ... without having to worry about the underlying MIME stuff and encoding issues. Mail::Builder relies heavily on the MIME::Entity module from the MIME::Tools distribution.

The module will create the correct MIME bodies, headers and containers (multipart/mixed, multipart/related, multipart/alternative) depending on if you use attachments, HTML text and inline images.

Furthermore it will encode non-ascii header data and autogenerate plaintext messages (if you don't provide it yourself or disable the autotext option) from html content.

Addresses, attachments and inline images are handled as objects by helper classes:

Mail::Builder::Address

Stores an e-mail address and a display name.
Attachments: Mail::Builder::Attachment::File and Mail::Builder::Attachment::Data

This classes manage attachments which can be created either from files in the filesystem or from data in memory.
Inline images:Mail::Builder::Image

The Mail::Builder::Image class manages images that should be displayed in the html e-mail body. (<img src="cid:imageid" />)
Mail::Builder::List

Helper class for handling list of varoius items (recipient lists, attachment lists, image lists)

METHODS

Constructors

new

This is a simple constructor. It does not expect any parameters.

Public methods

stringify

Returns the e-mail message as a string. This string can be passed to modules like Email::Send.

This method is just a shortcut to $mb->build_message->stringify

build_message

my $entity = $mb->build_message();

# Print the entire message:
$entity->print(\*STDOUT);

# Stringify the entire message:
print $entity->stringify;

Returns the e-mail message as a MIME::Entity object. You can mess around with the object, change parts, ... as you wish.

Every time you call build_message the MIME::Entity object will be created, which can take some time if you are sending bulk e-mails. In order to increase the processing speed Mail::Builder::Attachment and Mail::Builder::Image entities will be cached and only rebuilt if something has changed.

Accessors

from, returnpath, reply, sender

These accessors set/return the from, sender and reply address as well as the returnpath for bounced messages.

$obj->from(EMAIL[,NAME])
OR
$obj->from(Mail::Builder::Address)

This accessor always returns a Mail::Builder::Address object.

To change the attribute value you can either supply a Mail::Builder::Address object or scalar parameters which will be passed to Mail::Builder::Address->new. (email address, and an optional display name)

charset (DEPRECATED)

to, cc, bcc

$obj->to(Mail::Builder::List)
OR
$obj->to(Mail::Builder::Address)
OR
$obj->to(EMAIL[,NAME])

This accessor always returns a Mail::Builder::List object containing Mail::Builder::Address objects.

To alter the values you can either

Manipulate the Mail::Builder::List object (add, remove, ...)
Supply a Mail::Builder::Address object. This will reset the current list and add the object to the list.
Supply a Mail::Builder::List object. The list object replaces the old one if the list types match
Scalar values will be passed to Mail::Builder::Address->new. The returned object will be added to the object list.

The Mail::Builder::List package provides some basic methods for manipulating the list of recipients. e.g.

$obj->to->add(EMAIL[,NAME])
OR
$obj->to->add(Mail::Builder::Address)

language

e-mail text language

messageid

Message ID of the e-mail. Read only and available only after the build_message or stingify methods have been called.

organization

Accessor for the name of the sender's organisation. This header field is not part of the RFC 4021, however supported by many mailer applications.

priority

Priority accessor. Accepts values from 1 to 5. The default priority is 3.

subject

e-mail subject accessor. Must be specified.

htmltext

HTML mail body accessor.

mailer

Mailer name.

plaintext

Plaintext mail body accessor. This text will be autogenerated from htmltext if not provided by the user and the autotext option is not turned off. Simple formating (e.g. <strong>, <em>) will be converted to pseudo formating.

If you want to disable the autogeneration of plaintext parts set the autotext accessor to a false value. However be aware that most spam enginges rate e-mail messages without a plaintext part as spam.

The following html tags will be transformed to simple markup:

I, EM

Italic text will be surrounded by underscores. (_italic text_)
H1, H2, H3, ...

Two equal signs are prepended to headlines (== Headline)
STRONG, B

Bold text will be marked by stars (*bold text*)
HR

A horizontal rule is replaced with 60 dashes.
BR

Single linebreak
P, DIV

Two linebreaks
IMG

Prints the alt text of the image (if any).
A

Prints the link url surrounded by brackets ([http://myurl.com text])
UL, OL

All list items will be indented with a tab and prefixed with a start (*) or an index number.
TABLE, TR, TD, TH

Tables are converted into text using Text::Table.

attachment

$obj->attachment(Mail::Builder::List)
OR
$obj->attachment(Mail::Builder::Attachment)
OR
$obj->attachment(PATH[,NAME,MIME])

This accessor always returns a Mail::Builder::List object. If you supply a Mail::Builder::List the list will be replaced.

If you pass a Mail::Builder::Attachment object or a scalar path (with an optional name an mime type) the current list will be reset and the new attachment will be added.

The Mail::Builder::List package provides some basic methods for manipulating the list of attachments.

If you want to append an additional attachment to the list use

$obj->attachment->add(PATH[,NAME,MIME])
OR
$obj->attachment->add(Mail::Builder::Attachment)

image

$obj->image(Mail::Builder::List)
OR
$obj->image(Mail::Builder::Image)
OR
$obj->image(PATH[,ID])

This accessor always returns a Mail::Builder::List object. If you supply a Mail::Builder::List the list will be replaced.

If you pass a Mail::Builder::Image object or a scalar path (with an optional id) the current list will be reset and the new image will be added.

The Mail::Builder::List package provides some basic methods for manipulating the list of inline images.

If you want to append an additional attachment to the list use

$obj->image->add(PATH[,ID])
OR
$obj->image->add(Mail::Builder::Image)

You can embed the image into the html mail body code by referencing the ID. If you don't provide an ID the lowercase filename without the file extension will be used as the ID.

<img src="cid:logo"/>

Only jpg, gif and png images may be added as inline images.

EXAMPLE

If you want to send multiple e-mail messages from one Mail::Builder object (e.g. a solicited mailing to multiple recipients) you have to pay special attention, or else you might end up with mixed contents and growing recipients lists.

# Example for a mass mailing
foreach my $recipient (@recipients) {
    $mb->to->reset; # Remove all recipients
    $mb->to->add($recipient); # Add current recipient
    
    # Alternatively you could use $mb->to($recipient); which has the
    # same effect as the two previous commands. Same applies to 'cc' and 'bcc'
    
    $mb->plaintext(undef);
    # Reset plaintext, otherwise it will not be autogenerated from htmltext
    # after the first run
    
    $mb->htmltext(qq[<h1>Hello $recipient!</h1> Text, yadda yadda! ]);
    
    my $mail = $mb->stringify();
    
    # Send $mail ... 
}

IMPORTANT CHANGES

From 1.10 on Mail::Builder only supports utf-8 charsets for mails. Supporting multiple encodings turned out to be error prone and not necessary since all modern mail clients support utf-8.

CAVEATS

Watch out when sending Mail::Builder generated mails with Email::Send::SMTP: The 'Return-Path' headers are ignored by the MTA since Email::Send::SMTP uses the 'From' header for SMTP handshake. Postfix (any maybe some other MTAs) overwrites the 'Return-Path' field in the data with the e-mail used in the handshake ('From'). The behaviour of Email::Send::SMTP may however be modified by replacing the get_env_sender and get_env_recipients methods. See Email::Send::SMTP for more details.

SUPPORT

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-mail-builder@rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Report.html?Queue=Mail::Builder. I will be notified, and then you'll automatically be notified of progress on your report as I make changes.

AUTHOR

Maroš Kollár
CPAN ID: MAROS
maros [at] k-1.com
http://www.k-1.com

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This module was written for my old employer the Centre for Social Innovation http://www.zsi.at and is currently advanced by Revdev http://www.revdev.at, a nice litte software company I run with Koki and Domm (http://search.cpan.org/~domm/).

COPYRIGHT

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself as long it is not used for sending unsolicited mail (SPAM):

"Thou shalt not send SPAM with this module."

The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

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