**** **** MIME-parser has been uploaded to the CPAN under my author **** id (ERYQ) and name (Eryq). **** NAME MIME-parser - family of MIME:: modules for parsing MIME messages ALPHA-RELEASE WARNING THIS CODE IS IN AN EVALUATION PHASE UNTIL 1 AUGUST 1996. Depending on any comments/complaints received before this cutoff date, the interface *may* change in a non-backwards-compatible manner. DESCRIPTION MIME-parser is a collection of Perl5 MIME:: modules for parsing and decoding single- or multipart (even nested multipart) MIME messages. SYNOPSIS You start by creating an instance of MIME::Parser, and setting up certain parsing parameters: what directory to save extracted files to, how to name the files, etc. You then give that instance a readable filehandle on which waits a MIME message. If all goes well, you will get back a MIME::Entity object, consisting of a MIME::Head (which holds the MIME header data) and the name of the file in which the (decoded) body has been stored. 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...). Internally, MIME::Parser asks for instances of MIME::Decoder whenever it needs to decode an encoded file. MIME::Decoder has a mapping from supported encodings (e.g., 'base64') 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. MODULE SPECIFICATIONS Module DSLI Description Info ---------- ---- ---------------------------------------- ---- MIME:: ::Decoder adpO OO interface for decoding MIME messages ERYQ ::Entity adpO An extracted and decoded MIME entity ERYQ ::Head adpO A parsed MIME header ERYQ ::Parser adpO Parses streams to create MIME entities ERYQ CONTENTS OF THE PACKAGE ./MIME/*.pm the MIME-parser classes ./Makefile.PL the input to MakeMaker ./COPYING terms and conditions for copying/using the software ./README this file ./docs/ HTMLized documentation ./etc/ convenient copies of other modules you may need ./testin/ files you can use for testing (as in "make test") ./testout/ the output of "make test" REQUIREMENTS Obtain and install the following modules from the CPAN: MIME::QuotedPrint MIME::Base64 For your convenience, possibly-old copies are provided in the ./etc directory, of the distribution, but they are NOT installed for you during the installation procedure. INSTALLATION Pretty simple: 1. Gunzip and de-tar the distribution, and cd to the top level. 2. Type: perl Makefile.PL 3. Type: make # this step is optional 4. Type: make test # this step is optional 5. Type: make install Other interesting targets in the Makefile are: make config # to check if the Makefile is up-to-date make clean # delete local temp files (Makefile gets renamed) make realclean # delete derived files (including ./blib) MAJOR PLANS FOR THE FUTURE * Tighter coupling with Mail::Internet and friends. * Add option to parse message/rfc822 as a pseduo multipart document. * Dress up mimedump and mimeexplode utilities to take cmd line options for directory, environment vars (MIMEDUMP_OUTPUT, etc.). * Allow you to specify a cutoff() method that will determine whether a decoded message is stored on disk or in a scalar. Default will probably keep messages <10-20K in core. In such a case, the body() method will return undef; we'll need a new way of accessing the data transparently. Too bad setvbuf() isn't guaranteed... we could just "open" a filehandle on the scalar... hmmm... maybe I'll provide an open_body() for those lucky few that have it... :-) CHANGE LOG 1.13 MIME::Head now no longer requires space after ":", although either a space or a tab after the ":" will be swallowed if there. Thanks to Igor Starovoitov for pointing out this shortcoming. 1.12 Fixed bugs in parser where CRLF-terminated lines were blowing out the handling of preambles/epilogues. Thanks to Russell Sutherland for reporting this bug. Fixed idiotic is_multipart() bug. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for noticing it. Added untested binmode() calls to parser for DOS, etc. systems. No idea if this will work... Reorganized the output_path() methods to allow easy use of inheritance, as per Achim Bohnet's suggestion. Changed MIME::Head to report mime_type more accurately. POSIX module no longer loaded by Parser if perl >= 5.002. Hey, 5.001'ers: let me know if this breaks stuff, okay? Added unsupported ./examples directory. 1.11 Converted over to using Makefile.PL. Thanks to Andreas Koenig for the much-needed kick in the pants... Added t/*.t files for testing. Eeeeeeeeeeeh...it's a start. Fixed bug in default parsing routine for generating output paths; it was warning about evil filenames if there simply *were* no recommended filenames. D'oh! Fixed redefined parts() method in Entity. Fixed bugs in Head where field name wasn't being case folded. 1.10 A typo was causing the epilogue of an inner multipart message to be swallowed to the end of the OUTER multipart message; this has now been fixed. Thanks to Igor Starovoitov for reporting this bug. A bad regexp for parameter names was causing some parameters to be parsed incorrectly; this has also been fixed. Thanks again to Igor Starovoitov for reporting this bug. It is now possible to get full control of the filenaming algorithm before output files are generated, and the default algorithm is safer. Thanks to Laurent Amon for pointing out the problems, and suggesting some solutions. Fixed illegal "simple" multipart test file. D'OH! 1.9 No changes: 1.8 failed CPAN registration 1.8. Fixed incompatibility with 5.001 and FileHandle::new_tmpfile Added COPYING file, and improved README. TERMS AND CONDITIONS Copyright (c) 1996 by Eryq. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See the COPYING file in the distribution for details. SEE ALSO The MIME format is documented in RFC 1521. The MIME header format is documented in RFC 822. AUTHOR Eryq, eryq@rhine.gsfc.nasa.gov 28 April 1996