{"id":7215,"date":"2022-12-20T19:35:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T22:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lode.uno\/linux-man\/index.php\/2022\/12\/20\/mimetools-man3\/"},"modified":"2022-12-20T19:35:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T22:35:51","slug":"mimetools-man3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lode.uno\/linux-man\/2022\/12\/20\/mimetools-man3\/","title":{"rendered":"MIME::Tools (man3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIME::Tools<\/h1>\n

NAME<\/a>
SYNOPSIS<\/a>
DESCRIPTION<\/a>
REQUIREMENTS<\/a>
A QUICK TOUR<\/a>
THINGS YOU SHOULD DO<\/a>
THINGS I DO THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT<\/a>
A MIME PRIMER<\/a>
SEE ALSO<\/a>
SUPPORT<\/a>
CHANGE LOG<\/a>
AUTHOR<\/a>
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS<\/a>
LICENSE<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n

NAME <\/a> <\/h2>\n

MIME\u2212tools \u2212 modules for parsing (and creating!) MIME entities<\/p>\n

SYNOPSIS <\/a> <\/h2>\n

Here\u2019s some pretty basic code for parsing a MIME<\/small> message,<\/b> and outputting its decoded components to a given directory:<\/p>\n

use MIME::Parser;
### Create parser, and set some parsing options:
my $parser = new MIME::Parser;
$parser\u2212>output_under(“$ENV{HOME}\/mimemail”);
### Parse input:
$entity = $parser\u2212>parse(*STDIN) or die “parse failedn”;
### Take a look at the top\u2212level entity (and any parts it has):
$entity\u2212>dump_skeleton;<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s some code which composes and sends a MIME<\/small> message<\/b> containing three parts: a text file, an attached GIF,<\/small> and some more text:<\/p>\n

use MIME::Entity;
### Create the top\u2212level, and set up the mail headers:
$top = MIME::Entity\u2212>build(Type =>”multipart\/mixed”,
From => “me@myhost.com”,
To => “you@yourhost.com”,
Subject => “Hello, nurse!”);
### Part #1: a simple text document:
$top\u2212>attach(Path=>”.\/testin\/short.txt”);
### Part #2: a GIF file:
$top\u2212>attach(Path => “.\/docs\/mime\u2212sm.gif”,
Type => “image\/gif”,
Encoding => “base64”);
### Part #3: some literal text:
$top\u2212>attach(Data=>$message);
### Send it:
open MAIL, “| \/usr\/lib\/sendmail \u2212t \u2212oi \u2212oem” or die “open: $!”;
$top\u2212>print(*MAIL);
close MAIL;<\/p>\n

For more examples, look at the scripts in the examples<\/b> directory of the MIME-tools distribution.<\/p>\n

DESCRIPTION <\/a> <\/h2>\n

MIME-tools is a collection of Perl5 MIME::<\/small> modules for parsing, decoding, and generating<\/i> single\u2212 or multipart (even nested multipart) MIME<\/small> messages. (Yes, kids, that means you can send messages with attached GIF<\/small> files).<\/p>\n

REQUIREMENTS <\/a> <\/h2>\n

You will need the following installed on your system:<\/p>\n

File::Path
File::Spec
IPC::Open2 (optional)
MIME::Base64
MIME::QuotedPrint
Net::SMTP
Mail::Internet, … from the MailTools distribution.<\/p>\n

See the Makefile.PL in your distribution for the most-comprehensive list of prerequisite modules and their version numbers.<\/p>\n

A QUICK TOUR <\/a> <\/h2>\n

Overview of the classes<\/b>
Here are the classes you\u2019ll generally be dealing with directly:<\/p>\n

(START HERE) results() .\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212.
.\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212>| MIME:: |
.\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212. \/ | Parser::Results |
| MIME:: |\u2212\u2212’ `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’
| Parser |\u2212\u2212. .\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212.
`\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’ filer() | MIME:: |
| parse() `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212>| Parser::Filer |
| gives you `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’
| a… | output_path()
| | determines
| | path() of…
| head() .\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212. |
| returns… | MIME:: | get() |
V .\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212>| Head | etc… |
.\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212.\/ `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’ |
.\u2212\u2212\u2212> | MIME:: | |
`\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212| Entity | .\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212. |
parts() `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’ | MIME:: | \/
returns `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212>| Body |<\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212'
sub\u2212entities bodyhandle() `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’
(if any) returns… | open()
| returns…
|
V
.\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212. read()
| IO:: | getline()
| Handle | print()
`\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’ etc…<\/p>\n

To illustrate, parsing works this way:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\n

\u2022<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n\n

The “parser” parses the MIME<\/small> stream.<\/b> A parser is an instance of “MIME::Parser”. You hand it an input stream (like a filehandle) to parse a message from: if the parse is successful, the result is an “entity”.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\n\n

\u2022<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n\n

A parsed message is represented by an “entity”.<\/b> An entity is an instance of “MIME::Entity” (a subclass of “Mail::Internet”). If the message had “parts” (e.g., attachments), then those parts are “entities” as well, contained inside the top-level entity. Each entity has a “head” and a “body”.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\n\n

\u2022<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n\n

The entity\u2019s “head” contains information about the message.<\/b> A “head” is an instance of “MIME::Head” (a subclass of “Mail::Header”). It contains information from the message header: content type, sender, subject line, etc.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\n\n

\u2022<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n\n

The entity\u2019s “body” knows where the message data is.<\/b> You can ask to “open” this data source for reading<\/i> or writing<\/i>, and you will get back an “I\/O handle”.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\n\n

\u2022<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n\n

You can open() a “body” and get an “I\/O handle” to read\/write message data.<\/b> This handle is an object that is basically like an IO::Handle… it can be any class, so long as it supports a small, standard set of methods for reading from or writing to the underlying data source.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

A typical multipart message containing two parts — a textual greeting and an “attached” GIF<\/small> file — would be a tree of MIME::Entity objects, each of which would have its own MIME::Head. Like this:<\/p>\n

.\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212.
| MIME:: | Content\u2212type: multipart\/mixed
| Entity | Subject: Happy Samhaine!
`\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’
|
`\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212.
parts |
| .\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212.
|\u2212\u2212\u2212| MIME:: | Content\u2212type: text\/plain; charset=us\u2212ascii
| | Entity | Content\u2212transfer\u2212encoding: 7bit
| `\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’
| .\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212.
|\u2212\u2212\u2212| MIME:: | Content\u2212type: image\/gif
| Entity | Content\u2212transfer\u2212encoding: base64
`\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212’ Content\u2212disposition: inline;
filename=”hs.gif”<\/p>\n

Parsing messages<\/b>
You usually start by creating an instance of MIME::Parser<\/b> and setting up certain parsing parameters: what directory to save extracted files to, how to name the files, etc.<\/p>\n

You then give that instance a readable filehandle on which waits a MIME<\/small> message. If all goes well, you will get back a MIME::Entity<\/b> object (a subclass of Mail::Internet<\/b>), which consists of…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n\n

\u2022<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n\n

A MIME::Head<\/b> (a subclass of Mail::Header<\/b>) which holds the MIME<\/small> header data.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

<\/td>\n\n

\u2022<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

<\/td>\n\n

A MIME::Body<\/b>, which is a object that knows where the body data is. You ask this object to “open” itself for reading, and it will hand you back an “I\/O handle” for reading the data: this could be of any class, so long as it conforms to a subset of the IO::Handle<\/b> interface.<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

If the original message was a multipart document, the MIME::Entity object will have a non-empty list of “parts”, each of which is in turn a MIME::Entity (which might also be a multipart entity, etc, etc…).<\/p>\n

Internally, the parser (in MIME::Parser) asks for instances of MIME::Decoder<\/b> whenever it needs to decode an encoded file. MIME::Decoder has a mapping from supported encodings (e.g., \u2019base64\u2019) to classes whose instances can decode them. You can add to this mapping to try out new\/experiment encodings. You can also use MIME::Decoder by itself.<\/p>\n

Composing messages<\/b>
All message composition is done via the MIME::Entity<\/b> class. For single-part messages, you can use the MIME::Entity\/build<\/b> constructor to create MIME<\/small> entities very easily.<\/p>\n

For multipart messages, you can start by creating a top-level “multipart” entity with MIME::Entity::build()<\/b>, and then use the similar MIME::Entity::attach()<\/b> method to attach parts to that message. Please note:<\/i> what most people think of as “a text message with an attached GIF<\/small> file” is really<\/i> a multipart message with 2 parts: the first being the text message, and the second being the GIF<\/small> file.<\/p>\n

When building MIME<\/small> a entity, you\u2019ll have to provide two very important pieces of information: the content type<\/i> and the content transfer encoding<\/i>. The type is usually easy, as it is directly determined by the file format; e.g., an HTML<\/small> file is “text\/html”. The encoding, however, is trickier… for example, some HTML<\/small> files are “7bit”\u2212compliant, but others might have very long lines and would need to be sent “quoted\u2212printable” for reliability.<\/p>\n

See the section on encoding\/decoding for more details, as well as “A MIME PRIMER”<\/small> below.<\/p>\n

Sending email<\/b>
Since MIME::Entity inherits directly from Mail::Internet, you can use the normal Mail::Internet mechanisms to send email. For example,<\/p>\n

$entity\u2212>smtpsend;<\/p>\n

Encoding\/decoding support<\/b>
The MIME::Decoder<\/b> class can be used to encode<\/i> as well; this is done when printing MIME<\/small> entities. All the standard encodings are supported (see “A MIME PRIMER”<\/small> below for details):<\/p>\n

Encoding: | Normally used when message contents are:
\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212\u2212
7bit | 7\u2212bit data with under 1000 chars\/line, or multipart.
8bit | 8\u2212bit data with under 1000 chars\/line.
binary | 8\u2212bit data with some long lines (or no line breaks).
quoted\u2212printable | Text files with some 8\u2212bit chars (e.g., Latin\u22121 text).
base64 | Binary files.<\/p>\n

Which encoding you choose for a given document depends largely on (1) what you know about the document\u2019s contents (text vs binary), and (2) whether you need the resulting message to have a reliable encoding for 7\u2212bit Internet email transport.<\/p>\n

In general, only “quoted\u2212printable” and “base64” guarantee reliable transport of all data; the other three “no-encoding” encodings simply pass the data through, and are only reliable if that data is 7bit ASCII<\/small> with under 1000 characters per line, and has no conflicts with the multipart boundaries.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve considered making it so that the content-type and encoding can be automatically inferred from the file\u2019s path, but that seems to be asking for trouble… or at least, for Mail::Cap…<\/p>\n

Message-logging<\/b>
MIME-tools is a large and complex toolkit which tries to deal with a wide variety of external input. It\u2019s sometimes helpful to see what\u2019s really going on behind the scenes. There are several kinds of messages logged by the toolkit itself:
Debug messages<\/p>\n

These are printed directly to the STDERR,<\/small> with a prefix of “MIME\u2212tools: debug”.<\/p>\n

Debug message are only logged if you have turned “debugging” on in the MIME::Tools configuration.<\/p>\n

Warning messages<\/p>\n

These are logged by the standard Perl warn()<\/b> mechanism to indicate an unusual situation. They all have a prefix of “MIME\u2212tools: warning”.<\/p>\n

Warning messages are only logged if $^W is set true and MIME::Tools is not configured to be “quiet”.<\/p>\n

Error messages<\/p>\n

These are logged by the standard Perl warn()<\/b> mechanism to indicate that something actually failed. They all have a prefix of “MIME\u2212tools: error”.<\/p>\n

Error messages are only logged if $^W is set true and MIME::Tools is not configured to be “quiet”.<\/p>\n

Usage messages<\/p>\n

Unlike “typical” warnings above, which warn about problems processing data, usage-warnings are for alerting developers of deprecated methods and suspicious invocations.<\/p>\n

Usage messages are currently only logged if $^W is set true and MIME::Tools is not configured to be “quiet”.<\/p>\n

When a MIME::Parser (or one of its internal helper classes) wants to report a message, it generally does so by recording the message to the MIME::Parser::Results<\/b> object immediately before invoking the appropriate function above. That means each parsing run has its own trace-log which can be examined for problems.<\/p>\n

Configuring the toolkit<\/b>
If you want to tweak the way this toolkit works (for example, to turn on debugging), use the routines in the MIME::Tools<\/b> module.
debugging<\/p>\n

Turn debugging on or off. Default is false (off).<\/p>\n

MIME::Tools\u2212>debugging(1);<\/p>\n

quiet<\/p>\n

Turn the reporting of warning\/error messages on or off. Default is true, meaning that these message are silenced.<\/p>\n

MIME::Tools\u2212>quiet(1);<\/p>\n

version<\/p>\n

Return the toolkit version.<\/p>\n

print MIME::Tools\u2212>version, “n”;<\/p>\n

THINGS YOU SHOULD DO <\/a> <\/h2>\n

Take a look at the examples<\/b>
The MIME-Tools distribution comes with an “examples” directory. The scripts in there are basically just tossed-together, but they\u2019ll give you some ideas of how to use the parser.<\/p>\n

Run with warnings enabled<\/b>
Always<\/i> run your Perl script with “\u2212w”. If you see a warning about a deprecated method, change your code ASAP.<\/small> This will ease upgrades tremendously.<\/p>\n

Avoid non-standard encodings<\/b>
Don\u2019t try to MIME-encode using the non-standard MIME<\/small> encodings. It\u2019s just not a good practice if you want people to be able to read your messages.<\/p>\n

Plan for thrown exceptions<\/b>
For example, if your mail-handling code absolutely must not die, then perform mail parsing like this:<\/p>\n

$entity = eval { $parser\u2212>parse(*INPUT) };<\/p>\n

Parsing is a complex process, and some components may throw exceptions if seriously-bad things happen. Since “seriously-bad” is in the eye of the beholder, you\u2019re better off catching<\/i> possible exceptions instead of asking me to propagate “undef” up the stack. Use of exceptions in reusable modules is one of those religious issues we\u2019re never all going to agree upon; thankfully, that\u2019s what “eval{}” is good for.<\/p>\n

Check the parser results for warnings\/errors<\/b>
As of 5.3xx, the parser tries extremely hard to give you a MIME::Entity. If there were any problems, it logs warnings\/errors to the underlying “results” object (see MIME::Parser::Results). Look at that object after each parse. Print out the warnings and errors, especially<\/i> if messages don\u2019t parse the way you thought they would.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t plan on printing exactly what you parsed!<\/b>
Parsing is a (slightly) lossy operation.<\/i> Because of things like ambiguities in base64\u2212encoding, the following is not<\/i> going to spit out its input unchanged in all cases:<\/p>\n

$entity = $parser\u2212>parse(*STDIN);
$entity\u2212>print(*STDOUT);<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re using MIME::Tools to process email, remember to save the data you parse if you want to send it on unchanged. This is vital for things like PGP-signed email.<\/p>\n

Understand how international characters are represented<\/b>
The MIME<\/small> standard allows for text strings in headers to contain characters from any character set, by using special sequences which look like this:<\/p>\n

=?ISO\u22128859\u22121?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?=<\/p>\n

To be consistent with the existing Mail::Field classes, MIME::Tools does not<\/i> automatically unencode these strings, since doing so would lose the character-set information and interfere with the parsing of fields (see “decode_headers” in MIME::Parser for a full explanation). That means you should be prepared to deal with these encoded strings.<\/p>\n

The most common question then is, how do I decode these encoded strings?<\/b> The answer depends on what you want to decode them to<\/i>: ASCII,<\/small> Latin1, UTF\u22128,<\/small> etc. Be aware that your “target” representation may not support all possible character sets you might encounter; for example, Latin1 ( ISO\u22128859\u22121<\/small> ) has no way of representing Big5 (Chinese) characters. A common practice is to represent “untranslateable” characters as “?”s, or to ignore them completely.<\/p>\n

To unencode the strings into some of the more-popular Western byte representations (e.g., Latin1, Latin2, etc.), you can use the decoders in MIME::WordDecoder (see MIME::WordDecoder). The simplest way is by using “unmime()”, a function wrapped around your “default” decoder, as follows:<\/p>\n

use MIME::WordDecoder;
…
$subject = unmime $entity\u2212>head\u2212>get(‘subject’);<\/p>\n

One place this is<\/i> done automatically is in extracting the recommended filename for a part while parsing. That\u2019s why you should start by setting up the best “default” decoder if the default target of Latin1 isn\u2019t to your liking.<\/p>\n

THINGS I DO THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT <\/a> <\/h2>\n

Fuzzing of CRLF<\/small> and newline on input<\/b>
RFC 2045<\/small> dictates that MIME<\/small> streams have lines terminated by CRLF<\/small> (“rn”). However, it is extremely likely that folks will want to parse MIME<\/small> streams where each line ends in the local newline character “n” instead.<\/p>\n

An attempt has been made to allow the parser to handle both CRLF<\/small> and newline-terminated input.<\/p>\n

Fuzzing of CRLF<\/small> and newline when decoding<\/b>
The “7bit” and “8bit” decoders will decode both a “n” and a “rn” end-of-line sequence into a “n”.<\/p>\n

The “binary” decoder (default if no encoding specified) still outputs stuff verbatim… so a MIME<\/small> message with CRLFs and no explicit encoding will be output as a text file that, on many systems, will have an annoying ^M at the end of each line… but this is as it should be<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Fuzzing of CRLF<\/small> and newline when encoding\/composing<\/b>
TODO FIXME<\/small> All encoders currently output the end-of-line sequence as a “n”, with the assumption that the local mail agent will perform the conversion from newline to CRLF<\/small> when sending the mail. However, there probably should be an option to output CRLF<\/small> as per RFC 2045<\/small><\/p>\n

Inability to handle multipart boundaries with embedded newlines<\/b>
Let\u2019s get something straight: this is an evil, EVIL<\/small> practice. If your mailer creates multipart boundary strings that contain newlines, give it two weeks notice and find another one. If your mail robot receives MIME<\/small> mail like this, regard it as syntactically incorrect, which it is.<\/p>\n

Ignoring non-header headers<\/b>
People like to hand the parser raw messages straight from POP3<\/small> or from a mailbox. There is often predictable non-header information in front of the real headers; e.g., the initial “From” line in the following message:<\/p>\n

From \u2212 Wed Mar 22 02:13:18 2000
Return\u2212Path:
Subject: Hello<\/p>\n

The parser simply ignores such stuff quietly. Perhaps it shouldn\u2019t, but most people seem to want that behavior.<\/p>\n

Fuzzing of empty multipart preambles<\/b>
Please note that there is currently an ambiguity in the way preambles are parsed in. The following message fragments both<\/i> are regarded as having an empty preamble (where “n” indicates a newline character):<\/p>\n

Content\u2212type: multipart\/mixed; boundary=”xyz”n
Subject: This message (#1) has an empty preamblen
n
\u2212\u2212xyzn
…
Content\u2212type: multipart\/mixed; boundary=”xyz”n
Subject: This message (#2) also has an empty preamblen
n
n
\u2212\u2212xyzn
…<\/p>\n

In both cases, the first<\/i> completely-empty line (after the “Subject”) marks the end of the header.<\/p>\n

But we should clearly ignore the second<\/i> empty line in message #2, since it fills the role of “the newline which is only there to make sure that the boundary is at the beginning of a line”<\/i>. Such newlines are never<\/i> part of the content preceding the boundary; thus, there is no preamble “content” in message #2.<\/p>\n

However, it seems clear that message #1 also<\/i> has no preamble “content”, and is in fact merely a compact representation of an empty preamble.<\/p>\n

Use of a temp file during parsing<\/b>
Why not do everything in core?<\/i> Although the amount of core available on even a modest home system continues to grow, the size of attachments continues to grow with it. I wanted to make sure that even users with small systems could deal with decoding multi-megabyte sounds and movie files. That means not being core-bound.<\/p>\n

As of the released 5.3xx, MIME::Parser gets by with only one temp file open per parser. This temp file provides a sort of infinite scratch space for dealing with the current message part. It\u2019s fast and lightweight, but you should know about it anyway.<\/p>\n

Why do I assume that MIME<\/small> objects are email objects?<\/b>
Achim Bohnet once pointed out that MIME<\/small> headers do nothing more than store a collection of attributes, and thus could be represented as objects which don\u2019t inherit from Mail::Header.<\/p>\n

I agree in principle, but RFC 2045<\/small> says otherwise. RFC 2045<\/small> [ MIME<\/small> ] headers are a syntactic subset of RFC\u2212822<\/small> [email] headers. Perhaps a better name for these modules would have been RFC1521::<\/small> instead of MIME::,<\/small> but we\u2019re a little beyond that stage now.<\/p>\n

When I originally wrote these modules for the CPAN, I<\/small> agonized for a long time about whether or not they really should subclass from Mail::Internet<\/b> (then at version 1.17). Thanks to Graham Barr, who graciously evolved MailTools 1.06 to be more MIME-friendly, unification was achieved at MIME-tools release 2.0. The benefits in reuse alone have been substantial.<\/p>\n

A MIME PRIMER <\/a> <\/h2>\n

So you need to parse (or create) MIME,<\/small> but you\u2019re not quite up on the specifics? No problem…<\/p>\n

Glossary<\/b>
Here are some definitions adapted from RFC 1521<\/small> (predecessor of the current RFC<\/small> 204[56789] defining MIME<\/small> ) explaining the terminology we use; each is accompanied by the equivalent in MIME::<\/small> module terms…
attachment<\/p>\n

An “attachment” is common slang for any part of a multipart message — except, perhaps, for the first part, which normally carries a user message describing the attachments that follow (e.g.: “Hey dude, here\u2019s that GIF<\/small> file I promised you.”).<\/p>\n

In our system, an attachment is just a MIME::Entity<\/b> under the top-level entity, probably one of its parts.<\/p>\n

body<\/p>\n

The “body” of an entity is that portion of the entity which follows the header and which contains the real message content. For example, if your MIME<\/small> message has a GIF<\/small> file attachment, then the body of that attachment is the base64\u2212encoded GIF<\/small> file itself.<\/p>\n

A body is represented by an instance of MIME::Body<\/b>. You get the body of an entity by sending it a bodyhandle()<\/b> message.<\/p>\n

body part<\/p>\n

One of the parts of the body of a multipart \/entity<\/b>. A body part has a \/header<\/b> and a \/body<\/b>, so it makes sense to speak about the body of a body part.<\/p>\n

Since a body part is just a kind of entity, it\u2019s represented by an instance of MIME::Entity<\/b>.<\/p>\n

entity<\/p>\n

An “entity” means either a \/message<\/b> or a \/body part<\/b>. All entities have a \/header<\/b> and a \/body<\/b>.<\/p>\n

An entity is represented by an instance of MIME::Entity<\/b>. There are instance methods for recovering the header (a MIME::Head<\/b>) and the body (a MIME::Body<\/b>).<\/p>\n

header<\/p>\n

This is the top portion of the MIME<\/small> message, which contains the “Content-type”, “Content-transfer-encoding”, etc. Every MIME<\/small> entity has a header, represented by an instance of MIME::Head<\/b>. You get the header of an entity by sending it a head()<\/b> message.<\/p>\n

message<\/p>\n

A “message” generally means the complete (or “top-level”) message being transferred on a network.<\/p>\n

There currently is no explicit package for “messages”; under MIME::,<\/small> messages are streams of data which may be read in from files or filehandles. You can think of the MIME::Entity<\/b> returned by the MIME::Parser<\/b> as representing the full message.<\/p>\n

Content types<\/b>
This indicates what kind of data is in the MIME<\/small> message, usually as majortype\/minortype<\/i>. The standard major types are shown below. A more-comprehensive listing may be found in RFC\u22122046.<\/small>
application<\/p>\n

Data which does not fit in any of the other categories, particularly data to be processed by some type of application program. “application\/octet\u2212stream”, “application\/gzip”, “application\/postscript”…<\/p>\n

audio<\/p>\n

Audio data. “audio\/basic”…<\/p>\n

image<\/p>\n

Graphics data. “image\/gif”, “image\/jpeg”…<\/p>\n

message<\/p>\n

A message, usually another mail or MIME<\/small> message. “message\/rfc822″…<\/p>\n

multipart<\/p>\n

A message containing other messages. “multipart\/mixed”, “multipart\/alternative”…<\/p>\n

text<\/p>\n

Textual data, meant for humans to read. “text\/plain”, “text\/html”…<\/p>\n

video<\/p>\n

Video or video+audio data. “video\/mpeg”…<\/p>\n

Content transfer encodings<\/b>
This is how the message body is packaged up for safe transit. There are the 5 major MIME<\/small> encodings. A more-comprehensive listing may be found in RFC\u22122045.<\/small>
7bit<\/p>\n

No encoding is done at all. This label simply asserts that no 8\u2212bit characters are present, and that lines do not exceed 1000 characters in length (including the CRLF<\/small> ).<\/p>\n

8bit<\/p>\n

No encoding is done at all. This label simply asserts that the message might contain 8\u2212bit characters, and that lines do not exceed 1000 characters in length (including the CRLF<\/small> ).<\/p>\n

binary<\/p>\n

No encoding is done at all. This label simply asserts that the message might contain 8\u2212bit characters, and that lines may exceed 1000 characters in length. Such messages are the least<\/i> likely to get through mail gateways.<\/p>\n

base64<\/p>\n

A standard encoding, which maps arbitrary binary data to the 7bit domain. Like “uuencode”, but very well-defined. This is how you should send essentially binary information (tar files, GIFs, JPEGs, etc.).<\/p>\n

quoted-printable<\/p>\n

A standard encoding, which maps arbitrary line-oriented data to the 7bit domain. Useful for encoding messages which are textual in nature, yet which contain non-ASCII characters (e.g., Latin\u22121, Latin\u22122, or any other 8\u2212bit alphabet).<\/p>\n

SEE ALSO <\/a> <\/h2>\n

MIME::Parser, MIME::Head, MIME::Body, MIME::Entity, MIME::Decoder, Mail::Header, Mail::Internet<\/p>\n

At the time of this writing, the MIME-tools homepage was http:\/\/www.mimedefang.org\/static\/mime\u2212tools.php<\/i>. Check there for updates and support.<\/p>\n

The MIME<\/small> format is documented in RFCs 1521\u22121522, and more recently in RFCs 2045\u22122049.<\/p>\n

The MIME<\/small> header format is an outgrowth of the mail header format documented in RFC 822.<\/small><\/p>\n

SUPPORT <\/a> <\/h2>\n

Please file support requests via rt.cpan.org.<\/p>\n

CHANGE LOG <\/a> <\/h2>\n

Released as MIME-parser (1.0): 28 April 1996. Released as MIME-tools (2.0): Halloween 1996. Released as MIME-tools (4.0): Christmas 1997. Released as MIME-tools (5.0): Mother\u2019s Day 2000.<\/p>\n

See ChangeLog file for full details.<\/p>\n

AUTHOR <\/a> <\/h2>\n

Eryq (eryq@zeegee.com<\/i>), ZeeGee Software Inc (http:\/\/www.zeegee.com<\/i>). Dianne Skoll (dfs@roaringpenguin.com<\/i>) http:\/\/www.roaringpenguin.com<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Copyright (c) 1998, 1999 by ZeeGee Software Inc (www.zeegee.com). Copyright (c) 2004 by Roaring Penguin Software Inc (www.roaringpenguin.com)<\/p>\n

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

See the COPYING<\/small> file in the distribution for details.<\/p>\n

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS <\/a> <\/h2>\n

This kit would not have been possible<\/b> but for the direct contributions of the following:<\/p>\n

Gisle Aas The MIME encoding\/decoding modules.
Laurent Amon Bug reports and suggestions.
Graham Barr The new MailTools.
Achim Bohnet Numerous good suggestions, including the I\/O model.
Kent Boortz Initial code for RFC\u22121522\u2212decoding of MIME headers.
Andreas Koenig Numerous good ideas, tons of beta testing,
and help with CPAN\u2212friendly packaging.
Igor Starovoitov Bug reports and suggestions.
Jason L Tibbitts III Bug reports, suggestions, patches.<\/p>\n

Not to mention the Accidental Beta Test Team, whose bug reports (and comments) have been invaluable in improving the whole:<\/p>\n

Phil Abercrombie
Mike Blazer
Brandon Browning
Kurt Freytag
Steve Kilbane
Jake Morrison
Rolf Nelson
Joel Noble
Michael W. Normandin
Tim Pierce
Andrew Pimlott
Dragomir R. Radev
Nickolay Saukh
Russell Sutherland
Larry Virden
Zyx<\/p>\n

Please forgive me if I\u2019ve accidentally left you out. Better yet, email me, and I\u2019ll put you in.<\/p>\n

LICENSE <\/a> <\/h2>\n

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

See the COPYING<\/small> file for more details.<\/p>\n

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