NAME

       Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser - Perl extension to analyze bounce messages

SYNOPSIS

         use Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser;

         # $message is \*io or $fh or "entire\nmessage" or \@lines
         my $bounce = eval { Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser->new($message); };

         if ($@) {
           # couldn't parse.
         }

         my @addresses       = $bounce->addresses;       # email address strings
         my @reports         = $bounce->reports;         # Mail::Header objects
         my $orig_message_id = $bounce->orig_message_id; # <ABCD.1234@mx.example.com>
         my $orig_message    = $bounce->orig_message;    # Mail::Internet object

ABSTRACT

       Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser analyzes RFC822 bounce messages and returns a
       structured description of the addresses that bounced and the reason they bounced; it also
       returns information about the original returned message including the Message-ID.  It
       works best with RFC1892 delivery reports, but will gamely attempt to understand any bounce
       message no matter what MTA generated it.

DESCRIPTION

       Meng Wong wrote this for the Listbox v2 project; good mailing list managers handle bounce
       messages so listowners don't have to.  The best mailing list managers figure out exactly
       what is going on with each subscriber so the appropriate action can be taken.

   parse
         my $bounce = Mail::DeliveryStatus::BounceParser->parse($message, \%arg);

       OPTIONS.  If you pass BounceParser->new(..., {log=>sub { ... }}) That will be used as a
       logging callback. If $message is undefined, will parse STDIN.

       NON-BOUNCES.  If the message is recognizably a vacation autoresponse, or is a report of a
       transient nonfatal error, or a spam or virus autoresponse, you'll still get back a
       $bounce, but its "$bounce->is_bounce()" will return false.

       It is possible that some bounces are not really bounces; such as anything that appears to
       have a 2XX status code.  To include such non-bounces in the reports, pass the option
       {report_non_bounces=>1}.

       For historical reasons, "new" is an alias for the "parse" method.

   log
         $bounce->log($messages);

       If a logging callback has been given, the message will be passed to it.

   is_bounce
         if ($bounce->is_bounce) { ... }

       This method returns true if the bounce parser thought the message was a bounce, and false
       otherwise.

   reports
       Each $report returned by $bounce->reports() is basically a Mail::Header object with a few
       modifications.  It includes the email address bouncing, and the reason for the bounce.

       Consider an RFC1892 error report of the form

        Reporting-MTA: dns; hydrant.pobox.com
        Arrival-Date: Fri,  4 Oct 2002 16:49:32 -0400 (EDT)

        Final-Recipient: rfc822; bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com
        Action: failed
        Status: 5.0.0
        Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; host dumbo.pobox.com[208.210.125.24] said: 550
         <bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com>: Nonexistent Mailbox

       Each "header" above is available through the usual get() mechanism.

         print $report->get('reporting_mta');   # 'some.host.com'
         print $report->get('arrival-date');    # 'Fri,  4 Oct 2002 16:49:32 -0400 (EDT)'
         print $report->get('final-recipient'); # 'rfc822; bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com'
         print $report->get('action');          # "failed"
         print $report->get('status');          # "5.0.0"
         print $report->get('diagnostic-code'); # X-Postfix; ...

         # BounceParser also inserts a few interpretations of its own:
         print $report->get('email');           # 'bogus3@dumbo.pobox.com'
         print $report->get('std_reason');      # 'user_unknown'
         print $report->get('reason');          # host [199.248.185.2] said: 550 5.1.1 unknown or illegal user: somebody@uss.com
         print $report->get('host');            # dumbo.pobox.com
         print $report->get('smtp_code');       # 550

         print $report->get('raw') ||           # the original unstructured text
               $report->as_string;              # the original   structured text

       Probably the two most useful fields are "email" and "std_reason", the standardized reason.
       At this time BounceParser returns the following standardized reasons:

         user_unknown
         over_quota
         user_disabled
         domain_error
         spam
         message_too_large
         unknown
         no_problemo

       The "spam" standard reason indicates that the message bounced because the recipient
       considered it spam.

       (no_problemo will only appear if you set {report_non_bounces=>1})

       If the bounce message is not structured according to RFC1892, BounceParser will still try
       to return as much information as it can; in particular, you can count on "email" and
       "std_reason" to be present.

   addresses
       Returns a list of the addresses which appear to be bouncing.  Each member of the list is
       an email address string of the form 'foo@bar.com'.

   orig_message_id
       If possible, returns the message-id of the original message as a string.

   orig_message
       If the original message was included in the bounce, it'll be available here as a
       message/rfc822 MIME entity.

         my $orig_message    = $bounce->orig_message;

   orig_header
       If only the original headers were returned in the text/rfc822-headers chunk, they'll be
       available here as a Mail::Header entity.

   orig_text
       If the bounce message was poorly structured, the above two methods won't return anything
       --- instead, you get back a block of text that may or may not approximate the original
       message.  No guarantees.  Good luck.

CAVEATS

       Bounce messages are generally meant to be read by humans, not computers.  A poorly
       formatted bounce message may fool BounceParser into spreading its net too widely and
       returning email addresses that didn't actually bounce.  Before you do anything with the
       email addresses you get back, confirm that it makes sense that they might be bouncing ---
       for example, it doesn't make sense for the sender of the original message to show up in
       the addresses list, but it could if the bounce message is sufficiently misformatted.

       Still, please report all bugs!

FREE-FLOATING ANXIETY

       Some bizarre MTAs construct bounce messages using the original headers of the original
       message.  If your application relies on the assumption that all Message-IDs are unique,
       you need to watch out for these MTAs and program defensively; before doing anything with
       the Message-ID of a bounce message, first confirm that you haven't already seen it; if you
       have, change it to something else that you make up on the spot, such as
       "<antibogus-TIMESTAMP-PID-COUNT@LOCALHOST>".

BUGS

       BounceParser assumes a sanely constructed bounce message.  Input from the real world may
       cause BounceParser to barf and die horribly when we violate one of MIME::Entity's
       assumptions; this is why you should always call it inside an eval { }.

   TODO
       Provide some translation of the SMTP and DSN error codes into English.  Review RFC1891 and
       RFC1893.

KNOWN TO WORK WITH

       We understand bounce messages generated by the following MTAs / organizations:

        Postfix
        Sendmail
        Exim
        AOL
        Yahoo
        Hotmail
        AOL's AirMail sender-blocking
        Microsoft Exchange*
        Qmail*
        Novell Groupwise*

        * Items marked with an asterisk currently may return incomplete information.

SEE ALSO

         Used by http://listbox.com/ --- if you like BounceParser and you know it,
         consider Listbox for your mailing list needs!

         SVN repository and email list information at:
         http://emailproject.perl.org/

         RFC1892 and RFC1894

RANDOM OBSERVATION

       Schwern's modules have the Alexandre Dumas property.

AUTHOR

       Original author: Meng Weng Wong, <mengwong+bounceparser@pobox.com>

       Current maintainer: Ricardo SIGNES, <rjbs@cpan.org>

       Massive contributions to the 1.5xx series were made by William Yardley and Michael
       Stevens.  Ricardo mostly just helped out and managed releases.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

         Copyright (C) 2003-2006, IC Group, Inc.
         pobox.com permanent email forwarding with spam filtering
         listbox.com mailing list services for announcements and discussion

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

WITH A SHOUT OUT TO

         coraline, Fletch, TorgoX, mjd, a-mused, Masque, gbarr,
         sungo, dngor, and all the other hoopy froods on #perl