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MIME-tools![]() It's MIME time! * |
You usually start by creating an instance of MIME::Parser (a subclass of the abstract MIME::ParserBase ), 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 (a subclass of Mail::Internet ), which consists of...
Internally, the parser (in MIME::ParserBase) 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.
The MIME::Decoder can be used to encode as well. When encoding an 8-bit document as a 7-bit mail message, the 8-bit characters are escaped for you, by the MIME::Latin1 module.
If you want to tweak the way this toolkit works (for example, to turn on debugging), use the routines in the MIME::ToolUtils module.
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 ::IO adpO Simple I/O handles for filehandles/scalars ERYQ ::Latin1 adpO Encoding 8-bit Latin-1 as 7-bit ASCII ERYQ ::Parser adpO Parses streams to create MIME entities ERYQ ::ParserBase adpO For building your own MIME parser ERYQ
./MIME/*.pm the MIME-tools 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"
Obtain and install the following kits from the CPAN:
MIME::QuotedPrint MIME::Base64 MailTools: (1.06 or higher) Mail::Header Mail::Internet etc...
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.
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)
use MIME::ParserUtil; MIME::ParserUtil->emulate_version(1.0);
Try not to get too attached to this, though. Instead, plan on upgrading your code ASAP to the 2.0 style.
There is also IMHO no requirement [for] MIME::Heads to look like [email] headers; so to speak, the MIME::Head [simply stores] the attributes of a complex object, e.g.:
new MIME::Head type => "text/plain", charset => ..., disposition => ..., ... ;
I agree in principle, but (alas and dammit) RFC-1521 says otherwise. RFC-1521 [MIME] headers are a syntactic subset of RFC-822 [email] headers. Perhaps a better name for these modules would be RFC1521:: instead of MIME::, but we're a little beyond that stage now.
In my mind's eye, I see an abstract class, call it MIME::Attrs, which does what Achim suggests... so you could say:
my $attrs = new MIME::Attrs type => "text/plain", charset => ..., disposition => ..., ... ;
We could even make it a superclass of MIME::Head: that way, MIME::Head would have to implement its interface, and allow itself to be initiallized from a MIME::Attrs object.
However, when you read RFC-1521, you begin to see how much MIME information is organized by its presence in particular fields. I imagine that we'd begin to mirror the structure of RFC-1521 fields and subfields to such a degree that this might not give us a tremendous gain over just having MIME::Head.
get()
was less-efficient than I would have liked for MIME applications.
Since that time, I worked with Graham Barr (author of most of the MailTools package, and a darn nice guy to ``work'' with over email), and he has graciously evolved the MailTools modules into a direction that addressed a lot of these issues.
With MailTools now its 1.06 release, it was finally time to finish what I started, and release MIME-tools 2.0.
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.
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.
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!
cutoff()
method that will determine
whether 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... :-)
See the COPYING file in the distribution for details.
The MIME header format is documented in RFC 822.
Initial release (1.0): 28 April 1996. Re-release (2.0): Halloween 1996.