1Email::Find(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Email::Find(3)
2
6 Email::Find - Find RFC 822 email addresses in plain text
7
9 use Email::Find;
10 # new object oriented interface
12 my $finder = Email::Find->new(\&callback);
13 my $num_found - $finder->find(\$text);
14 # good old functional style
16 $num_found = find_emails($text, \&callback);
17
19 Email::Find is a module for finding a subset of RFC 822 email addresses
20 in arbitrary text (see "CAVEATS"). The addresses it finds are not
21 guaranteed to exist or even actually be email addresses at all (see
22 "CAVEATS"), but they will be valid RFC 822 syntax.
23 Email::Find will perform some heuristics to avoid some of the more
25 obvious red herrings and false addresses, but there's only so much
26 which can be done without a human.
27
29 new
30 $finder = Email::Find->new(\&callback);
31 Constructs new Email::Find object. Specified callback will be
33 called with each email as they're found.
34 find
36 $num_emails_found = $finder->find(\$text);
37 Finds email addresses in the text and executes callback registered.
39 The callback is given two arguments. The first is a Mail::Address
41 object representing the address found. The second is the actual
42 original email as found in the text. Whatever the callback returns
43 will replace the original text.
44
46 For backward compatibility, Email::Find exports one function,
47 find_emails(). It works very similar to URI::Find's find_uris().
48
50 use Email::Find;
51 # Simply print out all the addresses found leaving the text undisturbed.
53 my $finder = Email::Find->new(sub {
54 my($email, $orig_email) = @_;
55 print "Found ".$email->format."\n";
56 return $orig_email;
57 });
58 $finder->find(\$text);
59 # For each email found, ping its host to see if its alive.
61 require Net::Ping;
62 $ping = Net::Ping->new;
63 my %Pinged = ();
64 my $finder = Email::Find->new(sub {
65 my($email, $orig_email) = @_;
66 my $host = $email->host;
67 next if exists $Pinged{$host};
68 $Pinged{$host} = $ping->ping($host);
69 });
70 $finder->find(\$text);
72 while( my($host, $up) = each %Pinged ) {
74 print "$host is ". $up ? 'up' : 'down' ."\n";
75 }
76 # Count how many addresses are found.
78 my $finder = Email::Find->new(sub { $_[1] });
79 print "Found ", $finder->find(\$text), " addresses\n";
80 # Wrap each address in an HTML mailto link.
82 my $finder = Email::Find->new(
83 sub {
84 my($email, $orig_email) = @_;
85 my($address) = $email->format;
86 return qq|<a href="mailto:$address">$orig_email</a>|;
87 },
88 );
89 $finder->find(\$text);
90
92 If you want to change the way this module works in finding email
93 address, you can do it by making your subclass of Email::Find, which
94 overrides "addr_regex" and "do_validate" method.
95 For example, the following class can additionally find email addresses
97 with dot before at mark. This is illegal in RFC822, see
98 Email::Valid::Loose for details.
99 package Email::Find::Loose;
101 use base qw(Email::Find);
102 use Email::Valid::Loose;
103 # should return regex, which Email::Find will use in finding
105 # strings which are "thought to be" email addresses
106 sub addr_regex {
107 return $Email::Valid::Loose::Addr_spec_re;
108 }
109 # should validate $addr is a valid email or not.
111 # if so, return the address as a string.
112 # else, return undef
113 sub do_validate {
114 my($self, $addr) = @_;
115 return Email::Valid::Loose->address($addr);
116 }
117 Let's see another example, which validates if the address is an
119 existent one or not, with Mail::CheckUser module.
120 package Email::Find::Existent;
122 use base qw(Email::Find);
123 use Mail::CheckUser qw(check_email);
124 sub do_validate {
126 my($self, $addr) = @_;
127 return check_email($addr) ? $addr : undef;
128 }
129
131 Why a subset of RFC 822?
132 I say that this module finds a subset of RFC 822 because if I
133 attempted to look for all possible valid RFC 822 addresses I'd wind
134 up practically matching the entire block of text! The complete
135 specification is so wide open that its difficult to construct
136 soemthing that's not an RFC 822 address.
137 To keep myself sane, I look for the 'address spec' or 'global
139 address' part of an RFC 822 address. This is the part which most
140 people consider to be an email address (the 'foo@bar.com' part) and
141 it is also the part which contains the information necessary for
142 delivery.
143 Why are some of the matches not email addresses?
145 Alas, many things which aren't email addresses look like email
146 addresses and parse just fine as them. The biggest headache is
147 email and usenet and email message IDs. I do my best to avoid
148 them, but there's only so much cleverness you can pack into one
149 library.
150
152 Copyright 2000, 2001 Michael G Schwern <schwern@pobox.com>. All rights
153 reserved.
154 Current maintainer is Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa@bulknews.net>.
156
158 Schwern thanks to Jeremy Howard for his patch to make it work under
159 5.005.
160
162 This module is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
163 under the same terms as Perl itself.
164 The author STRONGLY SUGGESTS that this module not be used for the
166 purposes of sending unsolicited email (ie. spamming) in any way, shape
167 or form or for the purposes of generating lists for commercial sale.
168 If you use this module for spamming I reserve the right to make fun of
170 you.
171
173 Email::Valid, RFC 822, URI::Find, Apache::AntiSpam, Email::Valid::Loose
174
176 Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained
177 below:
178 Around line 138:
180 You forgot a '=back' before '=head1'
181perl v5.12.0 2007-01-16 Email::Find(3)