NAME
Email::MIME - easy MIME message handling
VERSION
version 1.936
SYNOPSIS
Wait! Before you read this, maybe you just need Email::Stuffer, which is a much easier-to-use tool for building simple email messages that might have attachments or both plain text and HTML. If that doesn't do it for you, then by all means keep reading.
use Email::MIME;
my $parsed = Email::MIME->new($message);
my @parts = $parsed->parts; # These will be Email::MIME objects, too.
my $decoded = $parsed->body;
my $non_decoded = $parsed->body_raw;
my $content_type = $parsed->content_type;
...or...
use Email::MIME;
use IO::All;
# multipart message
my @parts = (
Email::MIME->create(
attributes => {
filename => "report.pdf",
content_type => "application/pdf",
encoding => "quoted-printable",
name => "2004-financials.pdf",
},
body => io( "2004-financials.pdf" )->binary->all,
),
Email::MIME->create(
attributes => {
content_type => "text/plain",
disposition => "attachment",
charset => "US-ASCII",
},
body_str => "Hello there!",
),
);
my $email = Email::MIME->create(
header_str => [ From => 'casey@geeknest.com' ],
parts => [ @parts ],
);
# nesting parts
$email->parts_set(
[
$email->parts,
Email::MIME->create( parts => [ @parts ] ),
],
);
# standard modifications
$email->header_str_set( 'X-PoweredBy' => 'RT v3.0' );
$email->header_str_set( To => rcpts() );
$email->header_str_set( Cc => aux_rcpts() );
$email->header_str_set( Bcc => sekrit_rcpts() );
# more advanced
$_->encoding_set( 'base64' ) for $email->parts;
# Quick multipart creation
my $quicky = Email::MIME->create(
header_str => [
From => 'my@address',
To => 'your@address',
],
parts => [
q[This is part one],
q[This is part two],
q[These could be binary too],
],
);
print $email->as_string;
DESCRIPTION
This is an extension of the Email::Simple module, to handle MIME encoded messages. It takes a message as a string, splits it up into its constituent parts, and allows you access to various parts of the message. Headers are decoded from MIME encoding.
METHODS
Please see Email::Simple for the base set of methods. It won't take very long. Added to that, you have:
create
my $single = Email::MIME->create(
header_str => [ ... ],
body_str => '...',
attributes => { ... },
);
my $multi = Email::MIME->create(
header_str => [ ... ],
parts => [ ... ],
attributes => { ... },
);
This method creates a new MIME part. The header_str
parameter is a list of headers pairs to include in the message. The value for each pair is expected to be a text string that will be MIME-encoded as needed. A similar header
parameter can be provided in addition to or instead of header_str
. Its values will be used verbatim.
attributes
is a hash of MIME attributes to assign to the part, and may override portions of the header set in the header
parameter.
The parts
parameter is a list reference containing Email::MIME
objects. Elements of the parts
list can also be a non-reference string of data. In that case, an Email::MIME
object will be created for you. Simple checks will determine if the part is binary or not, and all parts created in this fashion are encoded with base64
, just in case.
If body
is given instead of parts
, it specifies the body to be used for a flat (subpart-less) MIME message. It is assumed to be a sequence of octets.
If body_str
is given instead of body
or parts
, it is assumed to be a character string to be used as the body. If you provide a body_str
parameter, you must provide charset
and encoding
attributes.
Back to attributes
. The hash keys correspond directly to methods or modifying a message from Email::MIME::Modifier
. The allowed keys are: content_type, charset, name, format, boundary, encoding, disposition, and filename. They will be mapped to "$attr\_set"
for message modification.
content_type_set
$email->content_type_set( 'text/html' );
Change the content type. All Content-Type
header attributes will remain intact.
charset_set
name_set
format_set
boundary_set
$email->charset_set( 'UTF-8' );
$email->name_set( 'some_filename.txt' );
$email->format_set( 'flowed' );
$email->boundary_set( undef ); # remove the boundary
These four methods modify common Content-Type
attributes. If set to undef
, the attribute is removed. All other Content-Type
header information is preserved when modifying an attribute.
encoding_set
$email->encoding_set( 'base64' );
$email->encoding_set( 'quoted-printable' );
$email->encoding_set( '8bit' );
Convert the message body and alter the Content-Transfer-Encoding
header using this method. Your message body, the output of the body()
method, will remain the same. The raw body, output with the body_raw()
method, will be changed to reflect the new encoding.
body_set
$email->body_set( $unencoded_body_string );
This method will encode the new body you send using the encoding specified in the Content-Transfer-Encoding
header, then set the body to the new encoded body.
This method overrides the default body_set()
method.
body_str_set
$email->body_str_set($unicode_str);
This method behaves like body_set
, but assumes that the given value is a Unicode string that should be encoded into the message's charset before being set.
The charset must already be set, either manually (via the attributes
argument to create
or charset_set
) or through the Content-Type
of a parsed message. If the charset can't be determined, an exception is thrown.
disposition_set
$email->disposition_set( 'attachment' );
Alter the Content-Disposition
of a message. All header attributes will remain intact.
filename_set
$email->filename_set( 'boo.pdf' );
Sets the filename attribute in the Content-Disposition
header. All other header information is preserved when setting this attribute.
parts_set
$email->parts_set( \@new_parts );
Replaces the parts for an object. Accepts a reference to a list of Email::MIME
objects, representing the new parts. If this message was originally a single part, the Content-Type
header will be changed to multipart/mixed
, and given a new boundary attribute.
parts_add
$email->parts_add( \@more_parts );
Adds MIME parts onto the current MIME part. This is a simple extension of parts_set
to make our lives easier. It accepts an array reference of additional parts.
walk_parts
$email->walk_parts(sub {
my ($part) = @_;
return if $part->subparts; # multipart
if ( $part->content_type =~ m[text/html]i ) {
my $body = $part->body;
$body =~ s/<link [^>]+>//; # simple filter example
$part->body_set( $body );
}
});
Walks through all the MIME parts in a message and applies a callback to each. Accepts a code reference as its only argument. The code reference will be passed a single argument, the current MIME part within the top-level MIME object. All changes will be applied in place.
header
Achtung! Beware this method! In Email::MIME, it means the same as header_str
, but on an Email::Simple object, it means header_raw
. Unless you always know what kind of object you have, you could get one of two significantly different behaviors.
Try to use either header_str
or header_raw
as appropriate.
header_str_set
$email->header_str_set($header_name => @value_strings);
This behaves like header_raw_set
, but expects Unicode (character) strings as the values to set, rather than pre-encoded byte strings. It will encode them as MIME encoded-words if they contain any control or 8-bit characters.
header_str_pairs
my @pairs = $email->header_str_pairs;
This method behaves like header_raw_pairs
, returning a list of field name/value pairs, but the values have been decoded to character strings, when possible.
parts
This returns a list of Email::MIME
objects reflecting the parts of the message. If it's a single-part message, you get the original object back.
In scalar context, this method returns the number of parts.
This is a stupid method. Don't use it.
subparts
This returns a list of Email::MIME
objects reflecting the parts of the message. If it's a single-part message, this method returns an empty list.
In scalar context, this method returns the number of subparts.
body
This decodes and returns the body of the object as a byte string. For top-level objects in multi-part messages, this is highly likely to be something like "This is a multi-part message in MIME format."
body_str
This decodes both the Content-Transfer-Encoding layer of the body (like the body
method) as well as the charset encoding of the body (unlike the body
method), returning a Unicode string.
If the charset is known, it is used. If there is no charset but the content type is either text/plain
or text/html
, us-ascii is assumed. Otherwise, an exception is thrown.
body_raw
This returns the body of the object, but doesn't decode the transfer encoding.
decode_hook
This method is called before the Email::MIME::Encodings decode
method, to decode the body of non-binary messages (or binary messages, if the force_decode_hook
method returns true). By default, this method does nothing, but subclasses may define behavior.
This method could be used to implement the decryption of content in secure email, for example.
content_type
This is a shortcut for access to the content type header.
filename
This provides the suggested filename for the attachment part. Normally it will return the filename from the headers, but if filename
is passed a true parameter, it will generate an appropriate "stable" filename if one is not found in the MIME headers.
invent_filename
my $filename = Email::MIME->invent_filename($content_type);
This routine is used by filename
to generate filenames for attached files. It will attempt to choose a reasonable extension, falling back to dat.
debug_structure
my $description = $email->debug_structure;
This method returns a string that describes the structure of the MIME entity. For example:
+ multipart/alternative; boundary="=_NextPart_2"; charset="BIG-5"
+ text/plain
+ text/html
TODO
All of the Email::MIME-specific guts should move to a single entry on the object's guts. This will require changes to both Email::MIME and Email::MIME::Modifier, sadly.
SEE ALSO
Email::Simple, Email::MIME::Modifier, Email::MIME::Creator.
THANKS
This module was generously sponsored by Best Practical (http://www.bestpractical.com/), Pete Sergeant, and Pobox.com.
AUTHORS
Ricardo SIGNES <rjbs@cpan.org>
Casey West <casey@geeknest.com>
Simon Cozens <simon@cpan.org>
CONTRIBUTORS
Alex Vandiver <alexmv@mit.edu>
Arthur Axel 'fREW' Schmidt <frioux@gmail.com>
Brian Cassidy <bricas@cpan.org>
David Steinbrunner <dsteinbrunner@pobox.com>
Dotan Dimet <dotan@corky.net>
Geraint Edwards <gedge-oss@yadn.org>
Jesse Luehrs <doy@tozt.net>
Kurt Anderson <kboth@drkurt.com>
Lance A. Brown <lance@bearcircle.net>
Matthew Horsfall (alh) <wolfsage@gmail.com>
memememomo <memememomo@gmail.com>
Shawn Sorichetti <ssoriche@coloredblocks.com>
Tomohiro Hosaka <bokutin@bokut.in>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2004 by Simon Cozens and Casey West.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.