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.

If it can't find a date, it returns false.

find_date is exported by default.

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.

format_date is exported by default.

format_gmdate
my $date = format_gmdate;

format_gmdate is identical to format_date, but it will return a string indicating the time in Greenwich Mean Time, rather than local time.

format_gmdate is exported on demand, but not by default.

PERL EMAIL PROJECT

This module is maintained by the Perl Email Project

http://emailproject.perl.org/wiki/Email::Date

SEE ALSO

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

AUTHOR

Casey West, <casey@geeknest.com>.

Ricardo SIGNES, <rjbs@cpan.org>.

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.