POP3Client(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation POP3Client(3)NAMEMail::POP3Client - Perl 5 module to talk to a POP3 (RFC1939) server
SYNOPSIS
use Mail::POP3Client;
$pop = new Mail::POP3Client( USER => "me",
PASSWORD => "mypassword",
HOST => "pop3.do.main" );
for( $i = 1; $i <= $pop->Count(); $i++ ) {
foreach( $pop->Head( $i ) ) {
/^(From|Subject):\s+/i && print $_, "\n";
}
}
$pop->Close();
# OR with SSL
$pop = new Mail::POP3Client( USER => "me",
PASSWORD => "mypassword",
HOST => "pop3.do.main",
USESSL => true,
);
# OR
$pop2 = new Mail::POP3Client( HOST => "pop3.otherdo.main" );
$pop2->User( "somebody" );
$pop2->Pass( "doublesecret" );
$pop2->Connect() >= 0 || die $pop2->Message();
$pop2->Close();
# OR to use your own SSL socket...
my $socket = IO::Socket::SSL->new( PeerAddr => 'pop.securedo.main',
PeerPort => 993,
Proto => 'tcp') || die "No socket!";
my $pop = Mail::POP3Client->new();
$pop->User('somebody');
$pop->Pass('doublesecret');
$pop->Socket($socket);
$pop->Connect();
DESCRIPTION
This module implements an Object-Oriented interface to a POP3 server.
It implements RFC1939 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1939.html)
EXAMPLES
Here is a simple example to list out the From: and Subject: headers in
your remote mailbox:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use Mail::POP3Client;
$pop = new Mail::POP3Client( USER => "me",
PASSWORD => "mypassword",
HOST => "pop3.do.main" );
for ($i = 1; $i <= $pop->Count(); $i++) {
foreach ( $pop->Head( $i ) ) {
/^(From|Subject):\s+/i and print $_, "\n";
}
print "\n";
}
CONSTRUCTORS
Old style (deprecated):
new Mail::POP3Client( USER, PASSWORD [, HOST, PORT, DEBUG,
AUTH_MODE] );
New style (shown with defaults):
new Mail::POP3Client( USER => "",
PASSWORD => "",
HOST => "pop3",
PORT => 110,
AUTH_MODE => 'BEST',
DEBUG => 0,
TIMEOUT => 60,
LOCALADDR => 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx[:xx]',
SOCKET => undef,
USESSL => 0,
);
· USER is the userID of the account on the POP server
· PASSWORD is the cleartext password for the userID
· HOST is the POP server name or IP address (default = 'pop3')
· PORT is the POP server port (default = 110)
· DEBUG - any non-null, non-zero value turns on debugging (default =
0)
· AUTH_MODE - pass 'APOP' to force APOP (MD5) authorization. (default
is 'BEST')
· TIMEOUT - set a timeout value for socket operations (default = 60)
· LOCALADDR - allow selecting a local inet address to use
METHODS
These commands are intended to make writing a POP3 client easier. They
do not necessarily map directly to POP3 commands defined in RFC1081 or
RFC1939, although all commands should be supported. Some commands
return multiple lines as an array in an array context.
new( USER => 'user', PASSWORD => 'password', HOST => 'host', PORT =>
110, DEBUG => 0, AUTH_MODE => 'BEST', TIMEOUT => 60,, LOCALADDR =>
'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx[:xx]', SOCKET => undef, USESSL => 0 ) )
Construct a new POP3 connection with this. You should use the
hash-style constructor. The old positional constructor is
deprecated and will be removed in a future release. It is
strongly recommended that you convert your code to the new
version.
You should give it at least 2 arguments: USER and PASSWORD.
The default HOST is 'pop3' which may or may not work for you.
You can specify a different PORT (be careful here).
new will attempt to Connect to and Login to the POP3 server if
you supply a USER and PASSWORD. If you do not supply them in
the constructor, you will need to call Connect yourself.
The valid values for AUTH_MODE are 'BEST', 'PASS', 'APOP' and
'CRAM-MD5'. BEST says to try APOP if the server appears to
support it and it can be used to successfully log on, next try
similarly with CRAM-MD5, and finally revert to PASS. APOP and
CRAM-MD5 imply that an MD5 checksum will be used instead of
sending your password in cleartext. However, if the server
does not claim to support APOP or CRAM-MD5, the cleartext
method will be used. Be careful. There are a few servers that
will send a timestamp in the banner greeting, but APOP will not
work with them (for instance if the server does not know your
password in cleartext). If you think your authentication
information is correct, run in DEBUG mode and look for errors
regarding authorization. If so, then you may have to use
'PASS' for that server. The same applies to CRAM-MD5, too.
If you enable debugging with DEBUG => 1, socket traffic will be
echoed to STDERR.
Another warning, it's impossible to differentiate between a
timeout and a failure.
If you pass a true value for USESSL, the port will be changed
to 995 if it is not set or is 110. Otherwise, it will use your
port. If USESSL is true, IO::Socket::SSL will be loaded. If
it is not in your perl, the call to connect will fail.
new returns a valid Mail::POP3Client object in all cases. To
test for a connection failure, you will need to check the
number of messages: -1 indicates a connection error. This will
likely change sometime in the future to return undef on an
error, setting $! as a side effect. This change will not
happen in any 2.x version.
Head( MESSAGE_NUMBER [, PREVIEW_LINES ] )
Get the headers of the specified message, either as an array or
as a string, depending on context.
You can also specify a number of preview lines which will be
returned with the headers. This may not be supported by all
POP3 server implementations as it is marked as optional in the
RFC. Submitted by Dennis Moroney <dennis@hub.iwl.net>.
Body( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
Get the body of the specified message, either as an array of
lines or as a string, depending on context.
BodyToFile( FILE_HANDLE, MESSAGE_NUMBER )
Get the body of the specified message and write it to the given
file handle. my $fh = new IO::Handle(); $fh->fdopen( fileno(
STDOUT ), "w" ); $pop->BodyToFile( $fh, 1 );
Does no stripping of NL or CR.
HeadAndBody( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
Get the head and body of the specified message, either as an
array of lines or as a string, depending on context.
Example
foreach ( $pop->HeadAndBody( 1 ) )
print $_, "\n";
prints out the complete text of message 1.
HeadAndBodyToFile( FILE_HANDLE, MESSAGE_NUMBER )
Get the head and body of the specified message and write it to
the given file handle. my $fh = new IO::Handle(); $fh->fdopen(
fileno( STDOUT ), "w" ); $pop->HeadAndBodyToFile( $fh, 1 );
Does no stripping of NL or CR.
Retrieve( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
Same as HeadAndBody.
RetrieveToFile( FILE_HANDLE, MESSAGE_NUMBER )
Same as HeadAndBodyToFile.
Delete( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
Mark the specified message number as DELETED. Becomes
effective upon QUIT (invoking the Close method). Can be reset
with a Reset message.
Connect Start the connection to the POP3 server. You can pass in the
host and port. Returns 1 if the connection succeeds, or 0 if
it fails (Message will contain a reason). The constructor
always returns a blessed reference to a Mail::POP3Client
obhect. This may change in a version 3.x release, but never in
a 2.x release.
Close Close the connection gracefully. POP3 says this will perform
any pending deletes on the server.
Alive Return true or false on whether the connection is active.
Socket Return the file descriptor for the socket, or set if supplied.
Size Set/Return the size of the remote mailbox. Set by POPStat.
Count Set/Return the number of remote messages. Set during Login.
Message The last status message received from the server or a message
describing any problem encountered.
State The internal state of the connection: DEAD, AUTHORIZATION,
TRANSACTION.
POPStat Return the results of a POP3 STAT command. Sets the size of
the mailbox.
List([message_number])
Returns the size of the given message number when called with
an argument using the following format:
<message_number> <size_in_bytes>
If message_number is omitted, List behaves the same as
ListArray, returning an indexed array of the sizes of each
message in the same format.
You can parse the size in bytes using split:
($msgnum, $size) = split('\s+', $pop -> List( n ));
ListArray
Return a list of sizes of each message. This returns an
indexed array, with each message number as an index (starting
from 1) and the value as the next entry on the line. Beware
that some servers send additional info for each message for the
list command. That info may be lost.
Uidl( [MESSAGE_NUMBER] )
Return the unique ID for the given message (or all of them).
Returns an indexed array with an entry for each valid message
number. Indexing begins at 1 to coincide with the server's
indexing.
Capa Query server capabilities, as described in RFC 2449. Returns
the capabilities in an array. Valid in all states.
XTND Optional extended commands. Transaction state only.
Last Return the number of the last message, retrieved from the
server.
Reset Tell the server to unmark any message marked for deletion.
User( [USER_NAME] )
Set/Return the current user name.
Pass( [PASSWORD] )
Set/Return the current user name.
Login Attempt to login to the server connection.
Host( [HOSTNAME] )
Set/Return the current host.
Port( [PORT_NUMBER] )
Set/Return the current port number.
IMAP COMPATIBILITY
Basic Mail::IMAPClient method calls are also supported: close, connect,
login, message_string, Password, and unseen. Also, empty stubs are
provided for Folder, folders, Peek, select, and Uid.
REQUIREMENTS
This module does not have mandatory requirements for modules that are
not part of the standard Perl distribution. However, APOP needs need
Digest::MD5 and CRAM-MD5 needs Digest::HMAC_MD5 and MIME::Base64.
AUTHOR
Sean Dowd <pop3client@dowds.net>
CREDITS
Based loosely on News::NNTPClient by Rodger Anderson
<rodger@boi.hp.com>.
SEE ALSOperl(1)
the Digest::MD5 manpage, the Digest::HMAC_MD5 manpage, the MIME::Base64
manpage
RFC 1939: Post Office Protocol - Version 3
RFC 2195: IMAP/POP AUTHorize Extension for Simple Challenge/Response
RFC 2449: POP3 Extension Mechanism
perl v5.14.1 2008-02-27 POP3Client(3)
