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Mail-Sendmail-0.72
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/ Mail::Sendmail

NAME

Mail::Sendmail v. 0.72 - Simple platform independent mailer

SYNOPSIS

use Mail::Sendmail;

%mail = ( To      => 'you@there.com',
          From    => 'me@here.com',
          Message => "This is a minimalistic message"
         );

if (sendmail %mail) { print "Mail sent OK.\n" }
else { print "Error sending mail: $Mail::Sendmail::error \n" }

print STDERR "\n\$Mail::Sendmail::log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;

DESCRIPTION

Simple platform independent e-mail from your perl script.

After struggling for some time with various command-line mailing programs which didn't give me all the control I wanted, I found a nice script by Christian Mallwitz, put it into a module, and added a few features I wanted.

Mail::Sendmail contains mainly &sendmail, which takes a hash with the message to send and sends it...

sendmail is exported to your namespace.

INSTALLATION

- Copy Sendmail.pm to Mail/ in your Perl lib directory (eg. c:\Perl\lib\Mail\, c:\Perl\lib\site\Mail\, /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/Mail/, ... or whatever it is on your system)

- At the top of Sendmail.pm, set your Time Zone and your default SMTP server

- If you want to use MIME quoted-printable encoding, you need MIME::QuotedPrint from CPAN. It's in the MIME-Base64 package. To get it with your browser go to http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/MIME/

FEATURES

- Automatic Mime quoted printable encoding if needed (needs MIME::QuotedPrint)

- Bcc: and Cc: support

- Doesn't send unwanted headers

- Allows you to send any header you want

- Doesn't abort sending if there is a bad recipient address among other good ones

- Makes verbose error messages

- Adds the Date header if you don't supply your own

LIMITATIONS

Doesn't send attachments. You can still send them if you provide the appropriate headers and boundaries, but that may not be practical, and I haven't tested it.

Not tested in a situation where the server goes down during session

Time Zone and SMTP server have to be set manually in Sendmail.pm or in your script, unless you can live with the defaults.

Time Zone has to be in numeric form (not like "GMT" etc...)

USAGE DETAILS

sendmail

sendmail is the only thing exported to your namespace

sendmail(%mail) || print "Error sending mail: $Mail::Sendmail::error\n";

- takes a hash containing the full message, with keys for all headers, Body, and optionally for another non-default SMTP server. (The Body part can be called "Body", "Message" or "Text")

- returns 1 on success, 0 on error.

updates $Mail::Sendmail::error and $Mail::Sendmail::log.

Keys are not case-sensitive. They get normalized before use with ucfirst( lc $key )

The following are not exported, but you can still access them with their full name:

Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date()

convert time ( as from time() ) to a string suitable for the Date header as per RFC 822.

$Mail::Sendmail::VERSION

The package version number

$Mail::Sendmail::error

Fatal or non-fatal socket or SMTP server errors

$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

Example:
  $rx = $Mail::Sendmail::address_rx;
  if (/$rx/) {
    $address=$1;
    $user=$2;
    $domain=$3;
  }
$Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_server

see Configuration below

$Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_port

see Configuration below

$Mail::Sendmail::TZ

Time Zone. see Configuration below

CONFIGURATION

At the top of Sendmail.pm, there are 2 variables you should set:

- your Time Zone (until I change the module so it finds the TZ itself). (1 hour for daylight savings time is added if your system says it should be)

- your default SMTP server.

and the port number if your server doesn't use the default port 25 (which would be surprising, but who knows).

If you want a different server only for a particular script put $Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_server = 'newserver.my-domain.com'; in your script.

If you want a different server only for a particular message, add it to your %message hash with a key of 'Smtp': $message{Smtp} = 'newserver.my-domain.com';

ANOTHER EXAMPLE

use Mail::Sendmail;

print STDERR "Testing Mail::Sendmail version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION\n";
print STDERR "smtp server: $Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_server\n";
print STDERR "server port: $Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_port\n";

%mail = (
    #To      => 'No to field this time, only Bcc and Cc',
    From    => 'Myself <me@here.com>',
    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",
);

$mail{Smtp} = 'special_server.for-this-message-only.domain.com';
$mail{'X-custom'} = 'My custom additionnal header';
$mail{message} = "Only a short message";
$mail{Date} = Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date( time() - 86400 ), # cheat on the date

if (sendmail %mail) { print "Mail sent OK.\n" }
else { print "Error sending mail: $Mail::Sendmail::error \n" }

print STDERR "\n\$Mail::Sendmail::log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;

CHANGES

0.72: Fixed line endings in Body to "\r\n". MIME quoted printable encoding is now automatic if needed. Test script can now run unattended.

0.71: Fixed Time Zone bug with AS port. Added half-hour Time Zone support. Repackaged with \n line endings instead of \r\n.

AUTHOR

Milivoj Ivkovic mi@alma.ch or ivkovic@csi.com

NOTES

You can use this freely.

I would appreciate a short (or long) e-mail note if you do. And of course, bug-reports and/or improvements are welcome.

This version has been tested on Win95 and WinNT 4.0 with Perl 5.003_07 (AS 313) and Perl 5.004_02 (GS), and on Linux 2.0.34 (Red Hat 5.1) with 5.004_04.

Last revision: 08.07.98. Latest version should be available at http://alma.ch/perl/mail.htm