NAME

SYNOPSIS

    require MIME::Head;

You can create a MIME::Head object in a number of ways:

    # Create a new, empty header, and populate it manually:    
    $head = MIME::Head->new;
    $head->set('content-type', 'text/plain; charset=US-ASCII');
    $head->set('content-length', $len);
    
    # Create a new header by parsing in the STDIN stream:
    $head = MIME::Head->read(\*STDIN);
    
    # Create a new header by parsing in a file:
    $head = MIME::Head->from_file("/tmp/test.hdr");
    
    # Create a new header by running a program:
    $head = MIME::Head->from_file("cat a.hdr b.hdr |");

To get rid of all internal newlines in all fields (called unfolding):

    # Get rid of all internal newlines:
    $head->unfold();

To RFC-1522-decode any Q- or B-encoded-text in the header fields:

    $head->decode();

To test whether a given field exists (consider using the inherited count method instead, though: exists has been deprecated, but will continue to work even if your MailTools is old):

    # Was a "Subject:" given?
    if ($head->exists('subject')) {
        # yes, it does!
    }

To get the contents of a field, either a specific occurence (defaults to the first occurence in a scalar context) or all occurences (in an array context):

    # Is this a reply?
    $reply = 1 if ($head->get('Subject') =~ /^Re: /);
    
    # Get receipt information:
    print "Last received from: ", $head->get('Received', 0), "\n";
    @all_received = $head->get('Received');

To get the first occurence of a field as a string, regardless of context:

    # Print the subject, or the empty string if none:
    print "Subject: ", $head->get('Subject',0), "\n";

To get all occurences of a field as an array, regardless of context:

    # Too many hops?  Count 'em and see!
    if (int($head->get_all('Received')) > 5) { ...

To set a field to a given string:

    # Declare this to be an HTML header:
    $head->replace('Content-type', 'text/html');

To get certain commonly-used MIME information:

    # The content type (e.g., "text/html"):
    $mime_type     = $head->mime_type;
    
    # The content transfer encoding (e.g., "quoted-printable"):
    $mime_encoding = $head->mime_encoding;
    
    # The recommended filename (e.g., "choosy-moms-choose.gif"):
    $file_name     = $head->recommended_filename;
    
    # The boundary text, for multipart messages:
    $boundary      = $head->multipart_boundary;

DESCRIPTION

PUBLIC INTERFACE

Creation, input, and output

new [ARG],[OPTIONS]

Class method, inherited. Creates a new header object. Arguments are the same as those in the superclass.

from_file EXPR,OPTIONS

Class or instance method. For convenience, you can use this to parse a header object in from EXPR, which may actually be any expression that can be sent to open() so as to return a readable filehandle. The ``file'' will be opened, read, and then closed:

    # Create a new header by parsing in a file:
    my $head = MIME::Head->from_file("/tmp/test.hdr");

Since this method can function as either a class constructor or an instance initializer, the above is exactly equivalent to:

    # Create a new header by parsing in a file:
    my $head = MIME::Head->new->from_file("/tmp/test.hdr");

On success, the object will be returned; on failure, the undefined value.

The OPTIONS are the same as in new(), and are passed into new() if this is invoked as a class method.

NOTE: This is really just a convenience front-end onto read(), provided mostly for backwards-compatibility with MIME-parser 1.0.

read FILEHANDLE

Instance (or class) method. This initiallizes a header object by reading it in from a FILEHANDLE, until the terminating blank line is encountered. A syntax error or end-of-stream will also halt processing.

Supply this routine with a reference to a filehandle glob; e.g., \*STDIN:

    # Create a new header by parsing in STDIN:
    $head->read(\*STDIN);

On success, the self object will be returned; on failure, a false value.

Note: in the MIME world, it is perfectly legal for a header to be empty, consisting of nothing but the terminating blank line. Thus, we can't just use the formula that ``no tags equals error''.

Warning: as of the time of this writing, Mail::Header::read did not flag either syntax errors or unexpected end-of-file conditions (an EOF before the terminating blank line). MIME::ParserBase takes this into account.

Getting/setting fields

add TAG,TEXT,[INDEX]

Instance method, inherited. Add a new occurence of the field named TAG, given by TEXT:

    # Add the trace information:    
    $head->add('Received', 'from eryq.pr.mcs.net by gonzo.net with smtp');

Normally, the new occurence will be appended to the existing occurences. However, if the optional INDEX argument is 0, then the new occurence will be prepended. If you want to be explicit about appending, specify an INDEX of -1.

NOTE: use of ``BEFORE'' (for index 0) or ``AFTER'' (for index -1) is still allowed, but deprecated.

WARNING: this method always adds new occurences; it doesn't overwrite any existing occurences... so if you just want to change the value of a field (creating it if necessary), then you probably don't want to use this method: consider using set() instead.

decode

Instance method. Go through all the header fields, looking for RFC-1522-style ``Q'' (quoted-printable, sort of) or ``B'' (base64) encoding, and decode them in-place. Fellow Americans, you probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Europeans, Russians, et al, you probably do. :-).

For example, here's a valid header you might get:

      From: =?US-ASCII?Q?Keith_Moore?= <moore@cs.utk.edu>
      To: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Keld_J=F8rn_Simonsen?= <keld@dkuug.dk>
      CC: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_?= Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
      Subject: =?ISO-8859-1?B?SWYgeW91IGNhbiByZWFkIHRoaXMgeW8=?=
       =?ISO-8859-2?B?dSB1bmRlcnN0YW5kIHRoZSBleGFtcGxlLg==?=
       =?US-ASCII?Q?.._cool!?=

That basically decodes to (sorry, I can only approximate the Latin characters with 7 bit sequences /o and 'e):

      From: Keith Moore <moore@cs.utk.edu>
      To: Keld J/orn Simonsen <keld@dkuug.dk>
      CC: Andr'e  Pirard <PIRARD@vm1.ulg.ac.be>
      Subject: If you can read this you understand the example... cool!

NOTE: currently, the decodings are done without regard to the character set: thus, the Q-encoding =F8 is simply translated to the octet (hexadecimal F8), period. Perhaps this is a bad idea; I honestly don't know. Certainly, a mail reader intended for humans should use the raw (undecoded) header. But a mail robot? Anyway, I'll gladly take guidance from anyone who has a clear idea of what should happen.

WARNING: the CRLF+SPACE separator that splits up long encoded words into shorter sequences (see the Subject: example above) gets lost when the field is unfolded, and so decoding after unfolding causes a spurious space to be left in the field. THEREFORE: if you're going to decode, do so BEFORE unfolding!

This method returns the self object.

Thanks to Kent Boortz for providing the idea, and the baseline RFC-1522-decoding code!

delete TAG,[INDEX]

Instance method, inherited. Delete all occurences of the field named TAG.

    # Remove all the MIME information:
    $head->delete('MIME-Version');
    $head->delete('Content-type');
    $head->delete('Content-transfer-encoding');
    $head->delete('Content-disposition');

exists TAG

Instance method, inherited, DEPRECATED. Returns whether a given field exists:

    # Was a "Subject:" given?
    if ($head->exists('subject')) {
        # yes, it does!
    }

The TAG is treated in a case-insensitive manner. This method returns some false value if the field doesn't exist, and some true value if it does.

DEPRECATED by Mail::Header v.1.06. If you have a recent copy of Mail::Header, you should use count() instead, which returns equivalent boolean values. MIME::Head::exists uses count() if it's available, but exists() is currently kept without warning for backwards-compatibility (since we don't want to demand that you have count()).

get TAG,[INDEX]

Instance method, inherited. Get the contents of field TAG.

If a numeric INDEX is given, returns the occurence at that index, or undef if not present:

    # Print the first 'Received:' entry (explicitly):
    print "Most recent: ", $head->get('received',0), "\n";
   
    # Print the last 'Received:' entry:
    print "Least recent: ", $head->get('received', -1), "\n"; 

If no INDEX is given, but invoked in a scalar context, then INDEX simply defaults to 0:

    # Get the first 'Received:' entry (implicitly):
    my $most_recent = $head->get('received');

If no INDEX is given, and invoked in an array context, then all occurences of the field are returned:

    # Get all 'Received:' entries:
    my @all_received = $head->get('received');

WARNING: This has changed since MIME-parser 1.x. You should now use the two-argument form if you want the old behavior, or else tweak the module to emulate version 1.0.

get_all FIELD

Instance method. Returns the list of all occurences of the field, or the empty list if the field is not present:

    # How did it get here?
    @history = $head->get_all('Received');

NOTE: I had originally experimented with having get() return all occurences when invoked in an array context... but that causes a lot of accidents when you get careless and do stuff like this:

    print "\u$field: ", $head->get($field), "\n";

It also made the intuitive behaviour unclear if the INDEX argument was given in an array context. So I opted for an explicit approach to asking for all occurences.

original_text

Instance method. Recover the original text that was read() in to create this object:

    print "PARSED FROM:\n", $head->original_text;    

WARNING: does no such thing now. Just returns a reasonable approximation of that text. Think of it as nothing more than a poorly-named as_string() method, which outputs the header fields in the order received. Provided for backwards-compatibility only.

This method depends on Mail::Header::header returning the information in the proper order.

print [FILEHANDLE]

Instance method, inherited. Print the header out to the given filehandle.

set TAG,TEXT

Instance method. Set the field named TAG to [the single occurence given by the TEXT:

    # Set the MIME type:
    $head->set('content-type', 'text/html');
    
The TAG is treated in a case-insensitive manner.

DEPRECATED. Use replace() instead.

unfold [FIELD]

Instance method, inherited. Unfold the text of all occurences of the given FIELD. If the FIELD is omitted, all fields are unfolded.

``Unfolding'' is the act of removing all newlines.

    $head->unfold;

Returns the ``self'' object.

MIME-specific methods

    Content-type
    Content-transfer-encoding
    Content-disposition

Be aware that they do not just return the raw contents of those fields, and in some cases they will fill in sensible (I hope) default values. Use get() if you need to grab and process the raw field text.

NOTE: some of these methods are provided both as a convenience and for backwards-compatibility only, while others (like recommended_filename()) really do have to be in MIME::Head to work properly, since they look for their value in more than one field. However, if you know that a value is restricted to a single field, you should really use the Mail::Field interface to get it.

mime_encoding

Instance method. Try real hard to determine the content transfer encoding (e.g., "base64", "binary"), which is returned in all-lowercase.

If no encoding could be found, the default of "7bit" is returned. I quote from RFC-1521 section 5:

    This is the default value -- that is, "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT" 
    is assumed if the Content-Transfer-Encoding header field is not present.

mime_type

Instance method. Try real hard to determine the content type (e.g., "text/plain", "image/gif", "x-weird-type", which is returned in all-lowercase.

If no content type could be found, the default of "text/plain" is returned. I quote from RFC-1521 section 7.1:

    The default Content-Type for Internet mail is 
    "text/plain; charset=us-ascii".

multipart_boundary

Instance method. If this is a header for a multipart message, return the ``encapsulation boundary'' used to separate the parts. The boundary is returned exactly as given in the Content-type: field; that is, the leading double-hyphen (--) is not prepended.

(Well, almost exactly... from RFC-1521:

   (If a boundary appears to end with white space, the white space 
   must be presumed to have been added by a gateway, and must be deleted.)  

so we oblige and remove any trailing spaces.)

Returns undef (not the empty string) if either the message is not multipart, if there is no specified boundary, or if the boundary is illegal (e.g., if it is empty after all trailing whitespace has been removed).

recommended_filename

Instance method. Return the recommended external filename. This is used when extracting the data from the MIME stream.

Returns undef if no filename could be suggested.

Compatibility tweaks

NOTES

Design issues

Why have separate objects for the entity, head, and body?

See the documentation for the MIME-parser distribution for the rationale behind this decision.

Why assume that MIME headers are email headers?

I quote from Achim Bohnet, who gave feedback on v.1.9 (I think he's using the word header where I would use field; e.g., to refer to ``Subject:'', ``Content-type:'', etc.):

    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.

Why all this "occurence" and "index" jazz? Isn't every field unique?

Aaaaaaaaaahh....no.

(This question is generic to all Mail::Header subclasses, but I'll field it here...)

Looking at a typical mail message header, it is sooooooo tempting to just store the fields as a hash of strings, one string per hash entry. Unfortunately, there's the little matter of the Received: field, which (unlike From:, To:, etc.) will often have multiple occurences; e.g.:

    Received: from gsfc.nasa.gov by eryq.pr.mcs.net  with smtp
        (Linux Smail3.1.28.1 #5) id m0tStZ7-0007X4C; Thu, 21 Dec 95 16:34 CST
    Received: from rhine.gsfc.nasa.gov by gsfc.nasa.gov (5.65/Ultrix3.0-C)
        id AA13596; Thu, 21 Dec 95 17:20:38 -0500
    Received: (from eryq@localhost) by rhine.gsfc.nasa.gov (8.6.12/8.6.12) 
        id RAA28069; Thu, 21 Dec 1995 17:27:54 -0500
    Date: Thu, 21 Dec 1995 17:27:54 -0500
    From: Eryq <eryq@rhine.gsfc.nasa.gov>
    Message-Id: <199512212227.RAA28069@rhine.gsfc.nasa.gov>
    To: eryq@eryq.pr.mcs.net
    Subject: Stuff and things

The Received: field is used for tracing message routes, and although it's not generally used for anything other than human debugging, I didn't want to inconvenience anyone who actually wanted to get at that information.

I also didn't want to make this a special case; after all, who knows what other fields could have multiple occurences in the future? So, clearly, multiple entries had to somehow be stored multiple times... and the different occurences had to be retrievable.

WARNINGS

NEWS FLASH!

If you are upgrading from the MIME-parser 1.0 package, and you used this module directly, you may notice some warnings about deprecated constructs in your code... all your stuff should (hopefully) still work... you'll just see a lot of warnings. However, you should read the COMPATIBILITY TWEAKS and WARNINGS sections before installing it!

I have also changed terminology to match with the new MailTools distribution. Thus, the name of a field (``Subject'', ``From'', ``To'', etc.) is now called a "tag" instead of a ``field''.

However, I have retained all the documentation where appropriate, even when inheriting from the Mail::Header module. Hopefully, you won't need to flip back and forth between man pages to use this module.

UPGRADING FROM 1.x to 2.x

Altered methods/usage

There are things you must beware of if you are either a MIME-parser 1.x user or a Mail::Header user:

Modified get() behavior

In the old system, always get() returned a single value, and get_all() returned multiple values: array vs. scalar context was not used.

Since Mail::Header does stuff differently, we have to obey our superclass or we might break some of its complex methods that use get() (like Mail::Header::combine(), which expects get() to return all fields in an array context). Unfortunately, this will break some of your old code.

For now, you can tell the system to emulate the MIME-parser version 1 behavior.

For future compatibility, you should, as soon as possible, modify your code to use the two-arg form of get if you want a single value, with the second arg being 0. This does what the old get() method did:

    print "Subject: ",  $head->get('subject',0), "\n";

Deprecated methods/usage

The following are deprecated as of MIME-parser v.2.0. In many cases, they are redundant with Mail::Header subroutines of different names:

add

Use numeric index 0 for 'BEFORE' and -1 for 'AFTER'.

add_text

If you really need this, use the inherited replace() method instead. The current implementation is now somewhat inefficient.

copy

Use the inherited dup() method instead.

fields

Use the inherited tags() method instead. Beware: that method does not automatically downcase its output for you: you will have to do that yourself.

params

Use the new MIME::Field interface classes (subclasses of Mail::Field) to access portions of a structured MIME field.

set

Use the inherited replace() method instead.

tweak_FROM_parsing

Use the inherited mail_from() method instead.

AUTHOR

All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

The more-comprehensive filename extraction is courtesy of Lee E. Brotzman, Advanced Data Solutions.

VERSION