1inc::Mail::Sendmail(3)User Contributed Perl Documentationinc::Mail::Sendmail(3)
2
6 Mail::Sendmail v. 0.78 - Simple platform independent mailer
7
9 use Mail::Sendmail;
10 %mail = ( To => 'you@there.com',
12 From => 'me@here.com',
13 Message => "This is a very short message"
14 );
15 sendmail(%mail) or die $Mail::Sendmail::error;
17 print "OK. Log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;
19
21 Simple platform independent e-mail from your perl script. Only requires
22 Perl 5 and a network connection.
23 After struggling for some time with various command-line mailing
25 programs which never did exactly what I wanted, I put together this
26 Perl only solution.
27 Mail::Sendmail contains mainly &sendmail, which takes a hash with the
29 message to send and sends it. It is intended to be very easy to setup
30 and use.
31
33 Best
34 perl -MCPAN -e "install Mail::Sendmail"
35 Traditional
37 perl Makefile.PL
38 make
39 make test
40 make install
41 Manual
43 Copy Sendmail.pm to Mail/ in your Perl lib directory.
44 (eg. c:\Perl\lib\Mail\, c:\Perl\site\lib\Mail\,
46 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/Mail/, ... or whatever it
47 is on your system)
48 ActivePerl's PPM
50 ppm install --location=http://alma.ch/perl/ppm Mail-Sendmail
51 But this way you don't get a chance to have a look at other files
53 (Changes, Todo, test.pl, ...) and PPM doesn't run the test script
54 (test.pl).
55 At the top of Sendmail.pm, set your default SMTP server, unless you
57 specify it with each message, or want to use the default.
58 Install MIME::QuotedPrint. This is not required but strongly
60 recommended.
61
63 Automatic time zone detection, Date: header, MIME quoted-printable
64 encoding (if MIME::QuotedPrint installed), all of which can be
65 overridden.
66 Internal Bcc: and Cc: support (even on broken servers)
68 Allows real names in From: and To: fields
70 Doesn't send unwanted headers, and allows you to send any header(s) you
72 want
73 Configurable retries and use of alternate servers if your mail server
75 is down
76 Good plain text error reporting
78
80 Doesn't work on OpenVMS.
81 Headers are not encoded, even if they have accented characters.
83 Since the whole message is in memory (twice!), it's not suitable for
85 sending very big attached files.
86 The SMTP server has to be set manually in Sendmail.pm or in your
88 script, unless you have a mail server on localhost.
89
91 Default SMTP server(s)
92 This is probably all you want to configure. It is usually done
93 through $mailcfg{smtp}, which you can edit at the top of the
94 Sendmail.pm file. This is a reference to a list of SMTP servers.
95 You can also set it from your script:
96 "unshift @{$Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{'smtp'}} , 'my.mail.server';"
98 Alternatively, you can specify the server in the %mail hash you
100 send from your script, which will do the same thing:
101 "$mail{smtp} = 'my.mail.server';"
103 A future version will try to set useful defaults for you during the
105 Makefile.PL.
106 Other configuration settings
108 See %mailcfg under "DETAILS" below for other configuration options.
109
111 sendmail()
112 sendmail is the only thing exported to your namespace by default
113 "sendmail(%mail) || print "Error sending mail:
115 $Mail::Sendmail::error\n";"
116 It takes a hash containing the full message, with keys for all headers,
118 body, and optionally for another non-default SMTP server and/or port.
119 It returns 1 on success or 0 on error, and rewrites
121 $Mail::Sendmail::error and $Mail::Sendmail::log.
122 Keys are NOT case-sensitive.
124 The colon after headers is not necessary.
126 The Body part key can be called 'Body', 'Message' or 'Text'. The SMTP
128 server key can be called 'Smtp' or 'Server'.
129 The following headers are added unless you specify them yourself:
131 Mime-version: 1.0
133 Content-type: 'text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"'
134 Content-transfer-encoding: quoted-printable
136 or (if MIME::QuotedPrint not installed)
137 Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit
138 Date: [string returned by time_to_date()]
140 The following are not exported by default, but you can still access
142 them with their full name, or request their export on the use line like
143 in: "use Mail::Sendmail qw($address_rx time_to_date);"
144 Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date()
146 convert time ( as from "time()" ) to an RFC 822 compliant string for
147 the Date header. See also "%Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg".
148 $Mail::Sendmail::error
150 When you don't run with the -w flag, the module sends no errors to
151 STDERR, but puts anything it has to complain about in here. You should
152 probably always check if it says something.
153 $Mail::Sendmail::log
155 A summary that you could write to a log file after each send
156 $Mail::Sendmail::address_rx
158 A handy regex to recognize e-mail addresses.
159 A correct regex for valid e-mail addresses was written by one of the
161 judges in the obfuscated Perl contest... :-) It is quite big. This one
162 is an attempt to a reasonable compromise, and should accept all real-
163 world internet style addresses. The domain part is required and
164 comments or characters that would need to be quoted are not supported.
165 Example:
167 $rx = $Mail::Sendmail::address_rx;
168 if (/$rx/) {
169 $address=$1;
170 $user=$2;
171 $domain=$3;
172 }
173 %Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg
175 This hash contains all configuration options. You normally edit it once
176 (if ever) in Sendmail.pm and forget about it, but you could also access
177 it from your scripts. For readability, I'll assume you have imported
178 it.
179 The keys are not case-sensitive: they are all converted to lowercase
181 before use. Writing "$mailcfg{Port} = 2525;" is OK: the default
182 $mailcfg{port} (25) will be deleted and replaced with your new value of
183 2525.
184 $mailcfg{smtp}
186 "$mailcfg{smtp} = [qw(localhost my.other.mail.server)];"
187 This is a reference to a list of smtp servers, so if your main
189 server is down, the module tries the next one. If one of your
190 servers uses a special port, add it to the server name with a colon
191 in front, to override the default port (like in
192 my.special.server:2525).
193 Default: localhost. (the previous version also had
195 smtp.site1.csi.com which was an open relay, but it isn't anymore)
196 $mailcfg{from}
198 "$mailcfg{from} = 'Mailing script me@mydomain.com';"
199 From address used if you don't supply one in your script. Should
201 not be of type 'user@localhost' since that may not be valid on the
202 recipient's host.
203 Default: undefined.
205 $mailcfg{mime}
207 "$mailcfg{mime} = 1;"
208 Set this to 0 if you don't want any automatic MIME encoding. You
210 normally don't need this, the module should 'Do the right thing'
211 anyway.
212 Default: 1;
214 $mailcfg{retries}
216 "$mailcfg{retries} = 1;"
217 How many times should the connection to the same SMTP server be
219 retried in case of a failure.
220 Default: 1;
222 $mailcfg{delay}
224 "$mailcfg{delay} = 1;"
225 Number of seconds to wait between retries. This delay also happens
227 before trying the next server in the list, if the retries for the
228 current server have been exhausted. For CGI scripts, you want few
229 retries and short delays to return with a results page before the
230 http connection times out. For unattended scripts, you may want to
231 use many retries and long delays to have a good chance of your mail
232 being sent even with temporary failures on your network.
233 Default: 1 (second);
235 $mailcfg{tz}
237 "$mailcfg{tz} = '+0800';"
238 Normally, your time zone is set automatically, from the difference
240 between "time()" and "gmtime()". This allows you to override
241 automatic detection in cases where your system is confused (such as
242 some Win32 systems in zones which do not use daylight savings time:
243 see Microsoft KB article Q148681)
244 Default: undefined (automatic detection at run-time).
246 $mailcfg{port}
248 "$mailcfg{port} = 25;"
249 Port used when none is specified in the server name.
251 Default: 25.
253 $mailcfg{debug}
255 "$mailcfg{debug} =" 0;>
256 Prints stuff to STDERR. Not used much, and what is printed may
258 change without notice. Don't count on it.
259 Default: 0;
261 $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION
263 The package version number (you can not import this one)
264 Configuration variables from previous versions
266 The following global variables were used in version 0.74 for
267 configuration. They should still work, but will not in a future
268 version (unless you complain loudly). Please use %mailcfg if you need
269 to access the configuration from your scripts.
270 $Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_server
272 $Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_port
273 $Mail::Sendmail::default_sender
274 $Mail::Sendmail::TZ
275 $Mail::Sendmail::connect_retries
276 $Mail::Sendmail::retry_delay
277 $Mail::Sendmail::use_MIME
278 This one couldn't really be used in the previous version, so I just
279 dropped it. It is replaced by $mailcfg{mime} which works.
280
282 use Mail::Sendmail;
283 print "Testing Mail::Sendmail version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION\n";
285 print "Default server: $Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{smtp}->[0]\n";
286 print "Default sender: $Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{from}\n";
287 %mail = (
289 #To => 'No to field this time, only Bcc and Cc',
290 #From => 'not needed, use default',
291 Bcc => 'Someone <him@there.com>, Someone else her@there.com',
292 # only addresses are extracted from Bcc, real names disregarded
293 Cc => 'Yet someone else <xz@whatever.com>',
294 # Cc will appear in the header. (Bcc will not)
295 Subject => 'Test message',
296 'X-Mailer' => "Mail::Sendmail version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION",
297 );
298 $mail{Smtp} = 'special_server.for-this-message-only.domain.com';
301 $mail{'X-custom'} = 'My custom additionnal header';
302 $mail{'mESSaGE : '} = "The message key looks terrible, but works.";
303 # cheat on the date:
304 $mail{Date} = Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date( time() - 86400 ),
305 if (sendmail %mail) { print "Mail sent OK.\n" }
307 else { print "Error sending mail: $Mail::Sendmail::error \n" }
308 print "\n\$Mail::Sendmail::log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;
310
312 Single-letter host names bug fixed since version 0.77. See the Changes
313 file for the full history.
314
316 Milivoj Ivkovic mi@alma.ch or ivkovic@bluewin.ch
317
319 MIME::QuotedPrint is used by default on every message if available. It
320 allows reliable sending of accented characters, and also takes care of
321 too long lines (which can happen in HTML mails). It is available in the
322 MIME-Base64 package at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/MIME/
323 or through PPM.
324 Look at http://alma.ch/perl/Mail-Sendmail-FAQ.htm for additional info
326 (CGI, examples of sending attachments, HTML mail etc...)
327 You can use it freely. (Someone complained this is too vague. So, more
329 precisely: do whatever you want with it, but be warned that terrible
330 things will happen to you if you use it badly, like for sending spam,
331 claiming you wrote it alone, or ...?)
332 I would appreciate a short (or long) e-mail note if you use this (and
334 even if you don't, especially if you care to say why). And of course,
335 bug-reports and/or suggestions are welcome.
336 Last revision: 25.09.2000. Latest version should be available at
338 http://alma.ch/perl/mail.htm , and a few days later on CPAN.
339perl v5.12.1 2008-07-19 inc::Mail::Sendmail(3)