NAME

       Email::Filter - Library for creating easy email filters

VERSION

       version 1.035

SYNOPSIS

           use Email::Filter;
           my $mail = Email::Filter->new(emergency => "~/emergency_mbox");
           $mail->pipe("listgate", "p5p")         if $mail->from =~ /perl5-porters/;
           $mail->accept("perl")                  if $mail->from =~ /perl/;
           $mail->reject("We do not accept spam") if $mail->subject =~ /enlarge/;
           $mail->ignore                          if $mail->subject =~ /boring/i;
           ...
           $mail->exit(0);
           $mail->accept("~/Mail/Archive/backup");
           $mail->exit(1);
           $mail->accept()

DESCRIPTION

       This module replaces "procmail" or "Mail::Audit", and allows you to write programs
       describing how your mail should be filtered.

PERL VERSION

       This code is effectively abandonware.  Although releases will sometimes be made to update
       contact info or to fix packaging flaws, bug reports will mostly be ignored.  Feature
       requests are even more likely to be ignored.  (If someone takes up maintenance of this
       code, they will presumably remove this notice.)  This means that whatever version of perl
       is currently required is unlikely to change -- but also that it might change at any new
       maintainer's whim.

METHODS

   new
           Email::Filter->new();                # Read from STDIN
           Email::Filter->new(data => $string); # Read from string

           Email::Filter->new(emergency => "~simon/urgh");
           # Deliver here in case of error

       This takes an email either from standard input, the usual case when called as a mail
       filter, or from a string.

       You may also provide an "emergency" option, which is a filename to deliver the mail to if
       it couldn't, for some reason, be handled properly.

       Hint
          If you put your constructor in a "BEGIN" block, like so:

              use Email::Filter;
              BEGIN { $item = Email::Filter->new(emergency => "~simon/urgh"); }

          right at the top of your mail filter script, you'll even be protected from losing mail
          even in the case of syntax errors in your script. How neat is that?

       This method provides the "new" trigger, called once an object is instantiated.

   exit
           $mail->exit(1|0);

       Sets or clears the 'exit' flag which determines whether or not the following methods exit
       after successful completion.

       The sense-inverted 'noexit' method is also provided for backwards compatibility with
       "Mail::Audit", but setting "noexit" to "yes" got a bit mind-bending after a while.

   simple
           $mail->simple();

       Gets and sets the underlying "Email::Simple" object for this filter; see Email::Simple for
       more details.

   header
           $mail->header("X-Something")

       Returns the specified mail headers. In scalar context, returns the first such header; in
       list context, returns them all.

   body
           $mail->body()

       Returns the body text of the email

   from
   to
   cc
   bcc
   subject
   received
           $mail-><header>()

       Convenience accessors for "header($header)"

   ignore
       Ignores this mail, exiting unconditionally unless "exit" has been set to false.

       This method provides the "ignore" trigger.

   accept
           $mail->accept();
           $mail->accept(@where);

       Accepts the mail into a given mailbox or mailboxes.  Unix "~/" and "~user/" prefices are
       resolved. If no mailbox is given, the default is determined according to
       Email::LocalDelivery: $ENV{MAIL}, /var/spool/mail/you, /var/mail/you, or ~you/Maildir/.

       This provides the "before_accept" and "after_accept" triggers, and exits unless "exit" has
       been set to false.  They are passed a reference to the @where array.

   reject
           $mail->reject("Go away!");

       This rejects the email; if called in a pipe from a mail transport agent, (such as in a
       ~/.forward file) the mail will be bounced back to the sender as undeliverable. If a reason
       is given, this will be included in the bounce.

       This calls the "reject" trigger. "exit" has no effect here.

   pipe
           $mail->pipe(qw[sendmail foo\@bar.com]);

       Pipes the mail to an external program, returning the standard output from that program if
       "exit" has been set to false. The program and each of its arguments must be supplied in a
       list. This allows you to do things like:

           $mail->exit(0);
           $mail->simple(Email::Simple->new($mail->pipe("spamassassin")));
           $mail->exit(1);

       in the absence of decent "Mail::SpamAssassin" support.

       If the program returns a non-zero exit code, the behaviour is dependent on the status of
       the "exit" flag. If this flag is set to true (the default), then "Email::Filter" tries to
       recover. (See "ERROR RECOVERY") If not, nothing is returned.

       If the last argument to "pipe" is a reference to a hash, it is taken to contain parameters
       to modify how "pipe" itself behaves.  The only useful parameter at this time is:

         header_only - only pipe the header, not the body

TRIGGERS

       Users of "Mail::Audit" will note that this class is much leaner than the one it replaces.
       For instance, it has no logging; the concept of "local options" has gone away, and so on.
       This is a deliberate design decision to make the class as simple and maintainable as
       possible.

       To make up for this, however, "Email::Filter" contains a trigger mechanism provided by
       Class::Trigger, to allow you to add your own functionality. You do this by calling the
       "add_trigger" method:

           Email::Filter->add_trigger( after_accept => \&log_accept );

       Hopefully this will also help subclassers.

       The methods below will list which triggers they provide.

ERROR RECOVERY

       If something bad happens during the "accept" or "pipe" method, or the "Email::Filter"
       object gets destroyed without being properly handled, then a fail-safe error recovery
       process is called. This first checks for the existence of the "emergency" setting, and
       tries to deliver to that mailbox. If there is no emergency mailbox or that delivery
       failed, then the program will either exit with a temporary failure error code, queuing the
       mail for redelivery later, or produce a warning to standard error, depending on the status
       of the "exit" setting.

AUTHORS

       •   Simon Cozens

       •   Casey West

       •   Ricardo SIGNES <rjbs@semiotic.systems>

CONTRIBUTORS

       •   Ricardo Signes <rjbs@cpan.org>

       •   William Yardley <pep@veggiechinese.net>

       •   Will Norris <will@willnorris.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       This software is copyright (c) 2003 by Simon Cozens.

       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
       the Perl 5 programming language system itself.