inc::Mail::Sendmail(3)User Contributed Perl Documentatioinc::Mail::Sendmail(3)NAME
Mail::Sendmail v. 0.78 - Simple platform independent mailer
SYNOPSIS
use Mail::Sendmail;
%mail = ( To => 'you@there.com',
From => 'me@here.com',
Message => "This is a very short message"
);
sendmail(%mail) or die $Mail::Sendmail::error;
print "OK. Log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;
DESCRIPTION
Simple platform independent e-mail from your perl script. Only requires
Perl 5 and a network connection.
After struggling for some time with various command-line mailing
programs which never did exactly what I wanted, I put together this
Perl only solution.
Mail::Sendmail contains mainly &sendmail, which takes a hash with the
message to send and sends it. It is intended to be very easy to setup
and use.
INSTALLATION
Best
perl -MCPAN -e "install Mail::Sendmail"
Traditional
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
Manual
Copy Sendmail.pm to Mail/ in your Perl lib directory.
(eg. c:\Perl\lib\Mail\, c:\Perl\site\lib\Mail\,
/usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/Mail/, ... or whatever it
is on your system)
ActivePerl's PPM
ppm install --location=http://alma.ch/perl/ppm Mail-Sendmail
But this way you don't get a chance to have a look at other files
(Changes, Todo, test.pl, ...) and PPM doesn't run the test script
(test.pl).
At the top of Sendmail.pm, set your default SMTP server, unless you
specify it with each message, or want to use the default.
Install MIME::QuotedPrint. This is not required but strongly
recommended.
FEATURES
Automatic time zone detection, Date: header, MIME quoted-printable
encoding (if MIME::QuotedPrint installed), all of which can be
overridden.
Internal Bcc: and Cc: support (even on broken servers)
Allows real names in From: and To: fields
Doesn't send unwanted headers, and allows you to send any header(s) you
want
Configurable retries and use of alternate servers if your mail server
is down
Good plain text error reporting
LIMITATIONS
Doesn't work on OpenVMS.
Headers are not encoded, even if they have accented characters.
Since the whole message is in memory (twice!), it's not suitable for
sending very big attached files.
The SMTP server has to be set manually in Sendmail.pm or in your
script, unless you have a mail server on localhost.
CONFIGURATION
Default SMTP server(s)
This is probably all you want to configure. It is usually done
through $mailcfg{smtp}, which you can edit at the top of the
Sendmail.pm file. This is a reference to a list of SMTP servers.
You can also set it from your script:
"unshift @{$Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{'smtp'}} , 'my.mail.server';"
Alternatively, you can specify the server in the %mail hash you
send from your script, which will do the same thing:
"$mail{smtp} = 'my.mail.server';"
A future version will try to set useful defaults for you during the
Makefile.PL.
Other configuration settings
See %mailcfg under "DETAILS" below for other configuration options.
DETAILSsendmail()
sendmail is the only thing exported to your namespace by default
"sendmail(%mail) || print "Error sending mail:
$Mail::Sendmail::error\n";"
It takes a hash containing the full message, with keys for all headers,
body, and optionally for another non-default SMTP server and/or port.
It returns 1 on success or 0 on error, and rewrites
$Mail::Sendmail::error and $Mail::Sendmail::log.
Keys are NOT case-sensitive.
The colon after headers is not necessary.
The Body part key can be called 'Body', 'Message' or 'Text'. The SMTP
server key can be called 'Smtp' or 'Server'.
The following headers are added unless you specify them yourself:
Mime-version: 1.0
Content-type: 'text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"'
Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
or (if MIME::QuotedPrint not installed)
Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
Date: [string returned by time_to_date()]
The following are not exported by default, but you can still access
them with their full name, or request their export on the use line like
in: "use Mail::Sendmail qw($address_rx time_to_date);"
Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date()
convert time ( as from "time()" ) to an RFC 822 compliant string for
the Date header. See also "%Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg".
$Mail::Sendmail::error
When you don't run with the -w flag, the module sends no errors to
STDERR, but puts anything it has to complain about in here. You should
probably always check if it says something.
$Mail::Sendmail::log
A summary that you could write to a log file after each send
$Mail::Sendmail::address_rx
A handy regex to recognize e-mail addresses.
A correct regex for valid e-mail addresses was written by one of the
judges in the obfuscated Perl contest... :-) It is quite big. This one
is an attempt to a reasonable compromise, and should accept all real-
world internet style addresses. The domain part is required and
comments or characters that would need to be quoted are not supported.
Example:
$rx = $Mail::Sendmail::address_rx;
if (/$rx/) {
$address=$1;
$user=$2;
$domain=$3;
}
%Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg
This hash contains all configuration options. You normally edit it once
(if ever) in Sendmail.pm and forget about it, but you could also access
it from your scripts. For readability, I'll assume you have imported
it.
The keys are not case-sensitive: they are all converted to lowercase
before use. Writing "$mailcfg{Port} = 2525;" is OK: the default
$mailcfg{port} (25) will be deleted and replaced with your new value of
2525.
$mailcfg{smtp}
"$mailcfg{smtp} = [qw(localhost my.other.mail.server)];"
This is a reference to a list of smtp servers, so if your main
server is down, the module tries the next one. If one of your
servers uses a special port, add it to the server name with a colon
in front, to override the default port (like in
my.special.server:2525).
Default: localhost. (the previous version also had
smtp.site1.csi.com which was an open relay, but it isn't anymore)
$mailcfg{from}
"$mailcfg{from} = 'Mailing script me@mydomain.com';"
From address used if you don't supply one in your script. Should
not be of type 'user@localhost' since that may not be valid on the
recipient's host.
Default: undefined.
$mailcfg{mime}
"$mailcfg{mime} = 1;"
Set this to 0 if you don't want any automatic MIME encoding. You
normally don't need this, the module should 'Do the right thing'
anyway.
Default: 1;
$mailcfg{retries}
"$mailcfg{retries} = 1;"
How many times should the connection to the same SMTP server be
retried in case of a failure.
Default: 1;
$mailcfg{delay}
"$mailcfg{delay} = 1;"
Number of seconds to wait between retries. This delay also happens
before trying the next server in the list, if the retries for the
current server have been exhausted. For CGI scripts, you want few
retries and short delays to return with a results page before the
http connection times out. For unattended scripts, you may want to
use many retries and long delays to have a good chance of your mail
being sent even with temporary failures on your network.
Default: 1 (second);
$mailcfg{tz}
"$mailcfg{tz} = '+0800';"
Normally, your time zone is set automatically, from the difference
between "time()" and "gmtime()". This allows you to override
automatic detection in cases where your system is confused (such as
some Win32 systems in zones which do not use daylight savings time:
see Microsoft KB article Q148681)
Default: undefined (automatic detection at run-time).
$mailcfg{port}
"$mailcfg{port} = 25;"
Port used when none is specified in the server name.
Default: 25.
$mailcfg{debug}
"$mailcfg{debug} =" 0;>
Prints stuff to STDERR. Not used much, and what is printed may
change without notice. Don't count on it.
Default: 0;
$Mail::Sendmail::VERSION
The package version number (you can not import this one)
Configuration variables from previous versions
The following global variables were used in version 0.74 for
configuration. They should still work, but will not in a future
version (unless you complain loudly). Please use %mailcfg if you need
to access the configuration from your scripts.
$Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_server
$Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_port
$Mail::Sendmail::default_sender
$Mail::Sendmail::TZ
$Mail::Sendmail::connect_retries
$Mail::Sendmail::retry_delay
$Mail::Sendmail::use_MIME
This one couldn't really be used in the previous version, so I just
dropped it. It is replaced by $mailcfg{mime} which works.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE
use Mail::Sendmail;
print "Testing Mail::Sendmail version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION\n";
print "Default server: $Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{smtp}->[0]\n";
print "Default sender: $Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{from}\n";
%mail = (
#To => 'No to field this time, only Bcc and Cc',
#From => 'not needed, use default',
Bcc => 'Someone <him@there.com>, Someone else her@there.com',
# only addresses are extracted from Bcc, real names disregarded
Cc => 'Yet someone else <xz@whatever.com>',
# Cc will appear in the header. (Bcc will not)
Subject => 'Test message',
'X-Mailer' => "Mail::Sendmail version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION",
);
$mail{Smtp} = 'special_server.for-this-message-only.domain.com';
$mail{'X-custom'} = 'My custom additionnal header';
$mail{'mESSaGE : '} = "The message key looks terrible, but works.";
# cheat on the date:
$mail{Date} = Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date( time() - 86400 ),
if (sendmail %mail) { print "Mail sent OK.\n" }
else { print "Error sending mail: $Mail::Sendmail::error \n" }
print "\n\$Mail::Sendmail::log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;
CHANGES
Single-letter host names bug fixed since version 0.77. See the Changes
file for the full history.
AUTHOR
Milivoj Ivkovic mi@alma.ch or ivkovic@bluewin.ch
NOTES
MIME::QuotedPrint is used by default on every message if available. It
allows reliable sending of accented characters, and also takes care of
too long lines (which can happen in HTML mails). It is available in the
MIME-Base64 package at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/MIME/
or through PPM.
Look at http://alma.ch/perl/Mail-Sendmail-FAQ.htm for additional info
(CGI, examples of sending attachments, HTML mail etc...)
You can use it freely. (Someone complained this is too vague. So, more
precisely: do whatever you want with it, but be warned that terrible
things will happen to you if you use it badly, like for sending spam,
claiming you wrote it alone, or ...?)
I would appreciate a short (or long) e-mail note if you use this (and
even if you don't, especially if you care to say why). And of course,
bug-reports and/or suggestions are welcome.
Last revision: 25.09.2000. Latest version should be available at
http://alma.ch/perl/mail.htm , and a few days later on CPAN.
perl v5.14.1 2010-08-27 inc::Mail::Sendmail(3)
