Provided by: libmail-mboxparser-perl_0.55-4_all 
NAME
Mail::MboxParser::Mail - Provide mail-objects and methods upon
SYNOPSIS
See Mail::MboxParser for an outline on usage. Examples however are also provided in this
manpage further below.
DESCRIPTION
Mail::MboxParser::Mail objects are usually not created directly though, in theory, they
could be. A description of the provided methods can be found in Mail::MboxParser.
However, go on reading if you want to use methods from MIME::Entity and learn about
overloading.
METHODS
new(header, body)
This is usually not called directly but instead by "get_messages()". You could however
create a mail-object manually providing the header and body each as either one string
or as an array-ref representing the lines.
Here is a common scenario: Retrieving mails from a remote POP-server using
Mail::POP3Client and directly feeding each mail to "Mail::MboxParser::Mail->new":
use Mail::POP3Client;
use Mail::MboxParser::Mail;
my $pop = new Mail::POP3Client (...);
for my $i (1 .. $pop->Count) {
my $msg = Mail::MboxParser::Mail->new( [ $pop->Head($i) ],
[ $pop->Body($i) ] );
$msg->store_all_attachments( path => '/home/user/dump' );
}
The above effectively behaves like an attachment-only retriever.
header
Returns the mail-header as a hash-ref with header-fields as keys. All keys are turned
to lower-case, so $header{Subject} has to be written as $header{subject}.
If a header-field occurs more than once in the header, the value of the key is an
array_ref. Example:
my $field = $msg->header->{field};
print $field->[0]; # first occurance of 'field'
print $field->[1]; # second one
...
from_line
Returns the "From "-line of the message.
trace
This method returns the "Received: "-lines of the message as a list.
body
body(n)
Returns a Mail::MboxParser::Mail::Body object. For methods upon that see further
below. When called with the argument n, the n-th body of the message is retrieved.
That is, the body of the n-th entity.
Sets "$mail->error" if something went wrong.
find_body
This will return an index number that represents what Mail::MboxParser::Mail considers
to be the actual (main)-body of an email. This is useful if you don't know about the
structure of a message but want to retrieve the message's signature for instance:
$signature = $msg->body($msg->find_body)->signature;
Changes are good that find_body does what it is supposed to do.
make_convertable
Returns a Mail::MboxParser::Mail::Convertable object. For details on what you can do
with it, read Mail::MboxParser::Mail::Convertable.
get_field(headerfield)
Returns the specified raw field from the message header, that is: the fieldname is not
stripped off nor is any decoding done. Returns multiple lines as needed if the field
is "Received" or another multi-line field. Not case sensitive.
"get_field()" always returns one string regardless of how many times the field occured
in the header. Multiple occurances are separated by a newline and multiple whitespaces
squeezed to one. That means you can process each occurance of the field thusly:
for my $field ( split /\n/, $msg->get_field('received') ) {
# do something with $field
}
Sets "$mail->error" if the field was not found in which case "get_field()" returns
"undef".
from
Returns a hash-ref with the two fields 'name' and 'email'. Returns "undef" if empty.
The name-field does not necessarily contain a value either. Example:
print $mail->from->{email};
On behalf of suggestions I received from users, from() tries to be smart when 'name'is
empty and 'email' has the form 'first.name@host.com'. In this case, 'name' is set to
"First Name".
to Returns an array of hash-references of all to-fields in the mail-header. Fields are
the same as those of "$mail->from". Example:
for my $recipient ($mail->to) {
print $recipient->{name} || "<no name>", "\n";
print $recipient->{email};
}
The same 'name'-smartness applies here as described under "from()".
cc Identical with to() but returning the hash-refed "Cc: "-line.
The same 'name'-smartness applies here as described under "from()".
id Returns the message-id of a message cutting off the leading and trailing '<' and '>'
respectively.
num_entities
Returns the number of MIME-entities. That is, the number of sub-entitities actually.
If 0 is returned and you think this is wrong, check "$mail->log".
get_entities
get_entities(n)
Either returns an array of all MIME::Entity objects or one particular if called with a
number. If no entity whatsoever could be found, an empty list is returned.
"$mail->log" instantly called after get_entities will give you some information of
what internally may have failed. If set, this will be an error raised by MIME::Entity
but you don't need to worry about it at all. It's just for the record.
get_entity_body(n)
Returns the body of the n-th MIME::Entity as a single string, undef otherwise in which
case you could check "$mail->error".
store_entity_body(n, handle => FILEHANDLE)
Stores the stringified body of n-th entity to the specified filehandle. That's
basically the same as:
my $body = $mail->get_entity_body(0);
print FILEHANDLE $body;
and could be shortened to this:
$mail->store_entity_body(0, handle => \*FILEHANDLE);
It returns a true value on success and undef on failure. In this case, examine the
value of $mail->error since the entity you specified with 'n' might not exist.
store_attachment(n)
store_attachment(n, options)
It is really just a call to store_entity_body but it will take care that the n-th
entity really is a saveable attachment. That is, it wont save anything with a MIME-
type of, say, text/html or so.
Unless further 'options' have been given, an attachment (if found) is stored into the
current directory under the recommended filename given in the MIME-header. 'options'
are specified in key/value pairs:
key: | value: | description:
===========|================|===============================
path | relative or | directory to store attachment
(".") | absolute |
| path |
-----------|----------------|-------------------------------
encode | encoding | Some platforms store files
| suitable for | in e.g. UTF-8. Specify the
| Encode::encode | appropriate encoding here and
| | and the filename will be en-
| | coded accordingly.
-----------|----------------|-------------------------------
store_only | a compiled | store only files whose file
| regex-pattern | names match this pattern
-----------|----------------|-------------------------------
code | an anonym | first argument will be the
| subroutine | $msg-object, second one the
| | index-number of the current
| | MIME-part
| | should return a filename for
| | the attachment
-----------|----------------|-------------------------------
prefix | prefix for | all filenames are prefixed
| filenames | with this value
-----------|----------------|-------------------------------
args | additional | this array-ref will be passed
| arguments as | on to the 'code' subroutine
| array-ref | as a dereferenced array
Example:
$msg->store_attachment(1,
path => "/home/ethan/",
code => sub {
my ($msg, $n, @args) = @_;
return $msg->id."+$n";
},
args => [ "Foo", "Bar" ]);
This will save the attachment found in the second entity under the name that consists
of the message-ID and the appendix "+1" since the above code works on the second
entity (that is, with index = 1). 'args' isn't used in this example but should
demonstrate how to pass additional arguments. Inside the 'code' sub, @args equals
("Foo", "Bar").
If 'path' does not exist, it will try to create the directory for you.
You can specify to save only files matching a certain pattern. To do that, use the
store-only switch:
$msg->store_attachment(1, path => "/home/ethan/",
store_only => qr/\.jpg$/i);
The above will only save files that end on '.jpg', not case-sensitive. You could also
use a non-compiled pattern if you want, but that would make for instance case-
insensitive matching a little cumbersome:
store_only => '(?i)\.jpg$'
If you are working on a platform that requires a certain encoding for filenames on
disk, you can use the 'encode' option. This becomes necessary for instance on Mac OS X
which internally is UTF-8 based. If the filename contains 8bit characters (like the
German umlauts or French accented characters as in 'e'), storing the attachment under
a non-encoded name will most likely fail. In this case, use something like this:
$msg->store_attachment(1, path => '/tmp', encode => 'utf-8');
See Encode::Supported for a list of encodings that you may use.
Returns the filename under which the attachment has been saved. undef is returned in
case the entity did not contain a saveable attachment, there was no such entity at all
or there was something wrong with the 'path' you specified. Check "$mail->error" to
find out which of these possibilities apply.
store_all_attachments
store_all_attachments(options)
Walks through an entire mail and stores all apparent attachments. 'options' are
exactly the same as in "store_attachment()" with the same behaviour if no options are
given.
Returns a list of files that have been successfully saved and an empty list if no
attachment could be extracted.
"$mail->error" will tell you possible failures and a possible explanation for that.
get_attachments
get_attachments(file)
This method returns a mapping from attachment-names (if those are saveable) to index-
numbers of the MIME-part that represents this attachment. It returns a hash-reference,
the file-names being the key and the index the value:
my $mapping = $msg->get_attachments;
for my $filename (keys %$mapping) {
print "$filename => $mapping->{$filename}\n";
}
If called with a string as argument, it tries to look up this filename. If it can't be
found, undef is returned. In this case you also should have an error-message patiently
awaiting you in the return value of "$mail->error".
Even though it looks tempting, don't do the following:
# BAD!
for my $file (qw/file1.ext file2.ext file3.ext file4.ext/) {
print "$file is in message ", $msg->id, "\n"
if defined $msg->get_attachments($file);
}
The reason is that "get_attachments()" is currently not optimized to cache the
filename mapping. So, each time you call it on (even the same) message, it will scan
it from beginning to end. Better would be:
# GOOD!
my $mapping = $msg->get_attachments;
for my $file (qw/file1.ext file2.ext file3.ext file4.ext/) {
print "$file is in message ", $msg->id, "\n"
if exists $mapping->{$file};
}
as_string
Returns the message as one string. This is the method that string overloading depends
on, so these two are the same:
print $msg;
print $msg->as_string;
EXTERNAL METHODS
Mail::MboxParser::Mail implements an autoloader that will do the appropriate type-casts
for you if you invoke methods from external modules. This, however, currently only works
with MIME::Entity. Support for other modules will follow. Example:
my $mb = Mail::MboxParser->new("/home/user/Mail/received");
for my $msg ($mb->get_messages) {
print $msg->effective_type, "\n";
}
"effective_type()" is not implemented by Mail::MboxParser::Mail and thus the corresponding
method of MIME::Entity is automatically called.
To learn about what methods might be useful for you, you should read the "Access"-part of
the section "PUBLIC INTERFACE" in the MIME::Entity manpage. It may become handy if you
have mails with a lot of MIME-parts and you not just want to handle binary-attachments but
any kind of MIME-data.
OVERLOADING
Mail::MboxParser::Mail overloads the " " operator. Overloading operators is a fancy
feature of Perl and some other languages (C++ for instance) which will change the
behaviour of an object when one of those overloaded operators is applied onto it. Here you
get the stringified mail when you write $mail while otherwise you'd get the stringified
reference: "Mail::MboxParser::Mail=HASH(...)".
VERSION
This is version 0.55.
AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
Tassilo von Parseval <tassilo.von.parseval@rwth-aachen.de>
Copyright (c) 2001-2005 Tassilo von Parseval. This program is free software; you can
redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
SEE ALSO
MIME::Entity
Mail::MboxParser, Mail::MboxParser::Mail::Body, Mail::MboxParser::Mail::Convertable