/ 
Email-Stuffer-0.002
River stage two • 10 direct dependents • 13 total dependents
/ Email::Stuffer

NAME

Email::Stuffer - A more casual approach to creating and sending Email:: emails

SYNOPSIS

# Prepare the message
my $body = <<'AMBUSH_READY';
Dear Santa

I have killed Bun Bun.

Yes, I know what you are thinking... but it was actually a total accident.

I was in a crowded line at a BayWatch signing, and I tripped, and stood on
his head.

I know. Oops! :/

So anyways, I am willing to sell you the body for $1 million dollars.

Be near the pinhole to the Dimension of Pain at midnight.

Alias

AMBUSH_READY

# Create and send the email in one shot
Email::Stuffer->from     ('cpan@ali.as'                      )
              ->to       ('santa@northpole.org'              )
              ->bcc      ('bunbun@sluggy.com'                )
              ->text_body($body                              )
              ->attach   (io('dead_bunbun_faked.gif')->all,
                          filename => 'dead_bunbun_proof.gif')
              ->send;

DESCRIPTION

The basics should all work, but this module is still subject to name and/or API changes

Email::Stuffer, as its name suggests, is a fairly casual module used to stuff things into an email and send them. It is a high-level module designed for ease of use when doing a very specific common task, but implemented on top of the light and tolerable Email:: modules.

Email::Stuffer is typically used to build emails and send them in a single statement, as seen in the synopsis. And it is certain only for use when creating and sending emails. As such, it contains no email parsing capability, and little to no modification support.

To re-iterate, this is very much a module for those "slap it together and fire it off" situations, but that still has enough grunt behind the scenes to do things properly.

Default Transport

Although it cannot be relied upon to work, the default behaviour is to use sendmail to send mail, if you don't provide the mail send channel with either the transport method, or as an argument to send.

(Actually, the choice of default is delegated to Email::Sender::Simple, which makes its own choices. But usually, it uses sendmail.)

Why use this?

Why not just use Email::Simple or Email::MIME? After all, this just adds another layer of stuff around those. Wouldn't using them directly be better?

Certainly, if you know EXACTLY what you are doing. The docs are clear enough, but you really do need to have an understanding of the structure of MIME emails. This structure is going to be different depending on whether you have text body, HTML, both, with or without an attachment etc.

Then there's brevity... compare the following roughly equivalent code.

First, the Email::Stuffer way.

Email::Stuffer->to('Simon Cozens<simon@somewhere.jp>')
              ->from('Santa@northpole.org')
              ->text_body("You've been good this year. No coal for you.")
              ->attach_file('choochoo.gif')
              ->send;

And now doing it directly with a knowledge of what your attachment is, and what the correct MIME structure is.

use Email::MIME;
use Email::Sender::Simple;
use IO::All;

Email::Sender::Simple->try_to_send(
  Email::MIME->create(
    header => [
        To => 'simon@somewhere.jp',
        From => 'santa@northpole.org',
    ],
    parts => [
        Email::MIME->create(
          body => "You've been a good boy this year. No coal for you."
        ),
        Email::MIME->create(
          body => io('choochoo.gif'),
          attributes => {
              filename => 'choochoo.gif',
              content_type => 'image/gif',
          },
       ),
    ],
  );
);

Again, if you know MIME well, and have the patience to manually code up the Email::MIME structure, go do that, if you really want to.

Email::Stuffer as the name suggests, solves one case and one case only: generate some stuff, and email it to somewhere, as conveniently as possible. DWIM, but do it as thinly as possible and use the solid Email:: modules underneath.

COOKBOOK

Here is another example (maybe plural later) of how you can use Email::Stuffer's brevity to your advantage.

Custom Alerts

package SMS::Alert;
use base 'Email::Stuffer';

sub new {
  shift()->SUPER::new(@_)
         ->from('monitor@my.website')
         # Of course, we could have pulled these from
         # $MyConfig->{support_tech} or something similar.
         ->to('0416181595@sms.gateway')
         ->transport('SMTP', { host => '123.123.123.123' });
}

package My::Code;

unless ( $Server->restart ) {
        # Notify the admin on call that a server went down and failed
        # to restart.
        SMS::Alert->subject("Server $Server failed to restart cleanly")
                  ->send;
}

METHODS

As you can see from the synopsis, all methods that modify the Email::Stuffer object returns the object, and thus most normal calls are chainable.

However, please note that send, and the group of methods that do not change the Email::Stuffer object do not return the object, and thus are not chainable.

new

Creates a new, empty, Email::Stuffer object.

header_names

Returns, as a list, all of the headers currently set for the Email For backwards compatibility, this method can also be called as B[headers].

parts

Returns, as a list, the Email::MIME parts for the Email

header $header => $value

Adds a single named header to the email. Note I said add not set, so you can just keep shoving the headers on. But of course, if you want to use to overwrite a header, you're stuffed. Because this module is not for changing emails, just throwing stuff together and sending it.

to $address

Adds a To: header to the email

from $address

Adds (yes ADDS, you only do it once) a From: header to the email

cc $address

Adds a Cc: header to the email

bcc $address

Adds a Bcc: header to the email

subject $text

Adds a subject to the email

text_body $body [, $header => $value, ... ]

Sets the text body of the email. Unless specified, all the appropriate headers are set for you. You may override any as needed. See Email::MIME for the actual headers to use.

If $body is undefined, this method will do nothing.

html_body $body [, $header => $value, ... ]

Set the HTML body of the email. Unless specified, all the appropriate headers are set for you. You may override any as needed. See Email::MIME for the actual headers to use.

If $body is undefined, this method will do nothing.

attach $contents [, $header => $value, ... ]

Adds an attachment to the email. The first argument is the file contents followed by (as for text_body and html_body) the list of headers to use. Email::Stuffer should TRY to guess the headers right, but you may wish to provide them anyway to be sure. Encoding is Base64 by default.

attach_file $file [, $header => $value, ... ]

Attachs a file that already exists on the filesystem to the email. attach_file will auto-detect the MIME type, and use the file's current name when attaching.

transport

$stuffer->transport( $moniker, @options )

or

$stuffer->transport( $transport_obj )

The transport method specifies the Email::Sender transport that you want to use to send the email, and any options that need to be used to instantiate the transport. $moniker is used as the transport name; if it starts with an equals sign (=) then the text after the sign is used as the class. Otherwise, the text is prepended by Email::Sender::Transport::. In neither case will a module be automatically loaded.

Alternatively, you can pass a complete transport object (which must be an Email::Send object) and it will be used as is.

email

Creates and returns the full Email::MIME object for the email.

as_string

Returns the string form of the email. Identical to (and uses behind the scenes) Email::MIME->as_string.

send

Sends the email via Email::Sender::Simple.

On failure, returns false.

send_or_die

Sends the email via Email::Sender::Simple.

On failure, throws an exception.

TO DO

  • Fix a number of bugs still likely to exist

  • Write more tests.

  • Add any additional small bit of automation that arn't too expensive

AUTHORS

Current maintainer: Ricardo Signes rjbs@cpan.org

Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org> wrote Email::Stuff, from which the great majority of the Email::Stuffer code is taken, whole cloth.

SEE ALSO

Email::MIME, Email::Sender, http://ali.as/

COPYRIGHT

Copyright 2004 - 2013 Adam Kennedy.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

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