1MIME-CONSTRUCT(1) User Contributed Perl Documentation MIME-CONSTRUCT(1)
2
6 mime-construct - construct and optionally mail MIME messages
7
9 mime-construct switch...
10 Sorry, it's hard to provide a meaningful synopsis. See the examples.
12
14 mime-construct constructs and (by default) mails MIME messages. It is
15 entirely driven from the command line, it is designed to be used by
16 other programs, or people who act like programs.
17
19 Global Settings
20 --debug
21 Turn debugging on.
22 --help
24 Show the usage message and die.
25 --output
27 Don't mail the generated message, print it to stdout instead. This
28 loses --bcc info.
29 --subpart
31 Generate a subpart which can be used in another MIME message,
32 rather than a top-level MIME message itself. This turns on
33 --output and changes some internal semantics a bit. See the
34 examples.
35 --version
37 Print the version and exit successfully, if this is the only arg.
38 Otherwise, print the version and die.
39 Main Header
41 These arguments add text to the top-level header of the message, or
42 control who it gets sent to.
43 --bcc address
45 Add address to the recipient list. This doesn't actually add
46 anything to the header, of course. If you're not actually mailing
47 the message (if you use --output or --subpart) --bcc will have no
48 effect.
49 --cc address
51 Add an address to the Cc: list.
52 --embedded-to
54 Send the message to the recipients already listed in the header, in
55 addition to those given with --to, --cc, and --bcc. This makes
56 sense if you use the --header switch to add your own To: or Cc:.
57 In this case you probably don't want to use --to or --cc because
58 they would create new headers rather than adding to the ones
59 already in the message.
60 This switch passes the -t switch to sendmail (mime-construct
62 doesn't try to parse the headers you provide), so it doesn't really
63 do anything if you're not mailing the message.
64 --header str
66 Add arbitrary text to the header. The str can be anything you
67 like, including multiple lines. You can create invalid messages
68 this way. If you include a blank line in the str you'll really
69 screw up the message.
70 --multipart str
72 This specifies the multipart content type and options. The default
73 is "multipart/mixed". Don't include a "boundary" setting, that's
74 supplied by mime-construct.
75 It's okay if you specify the --multipart type but the message turns
77 out to be a single part, the type you supply will just be ignored.
78 --prelude str
80 This adds str to the multipart prelude text. If you specify
81 --prelude multiple times the strs will all be concatenated.
82 There isn't any default for this text. It seems to me that
84 nowadays adding an explanation of MIME to the beginning of a
85 message is like explaining how to use a seat buckle to people who
86 are riding in an airplane.
87 It's okay if you specify the --prelude but the message turns out to
89 be a single part, the prelude you supply will just be ignored.
90 --subject str
92 Specify the subject for the message.
93 --to address
95 Add an address to the To: list.
96 Per-part Header
98 These switches control the per-part headers. If the message turns out
99 not to be multipart they actually add data to the top level header.
100 Each of these applies only to the next part output. After each part is
102 output they are reset to their default values. It doesn't make sense
103 to use them without a following part, so mime-construct will sputter
104 and die if you try to do that.
105 --attachment name
107 This adds a "Content-Disposition: attachment" header with the given
108 name as the value of the "filename" attribute. It's just a
109 convenience, since mime-construct is often used to send files as
110 attachments.
111 Using --attachment name does not cause mime-construct to read any
113 data from the file called name! It just uses that name in the
114 header. The actual data which will go into this part of the
115 message comes from one of the regular part output switches (given
116 below).
117 You might prefer to use the --file-attach switch, which does read
119 from the named file.
120 --encoding type
122 This specifies the type of encoding you want this part to use. You
123 normally shouldn't use this switch, though. If this switch isn't
124 used mime-construct will choose an appropriate encoding.
125 The data you supply mustn't be encoded already, mime-construct will
127 encode it according to the type you specify here. Valid encodings
128 are 7bit, 8bit, binary, quoted-printable, and base64. It's easy to
129 generate an illegal MIME message by specifying the encoding
130 yourself.
131 --part-header str
133 Add arbitrary text to the per-part header. The str can be anything
134 you like, including multiple lines. You can create invalid
135 messages this way. If you include a blank line in the str you'll
136 really screw up the message.
137 --type type
139 Specify the content type for this part. If you don't specify a
140 --type it defaults to "text/plain". The type you supply can
141 contain not only the type proper but also options. The whole thing
142 will just be plopped onto the end of "Content-Type:" and stuck into
143 the header.
144 You might prefer to use the --file-auto or --file-attach switches,
146 which set the --type automatically based on a file's name.
147 Part Output
149 These switches add data to the body of the message. You use one of
150 these for each for each part of a multipart message (or just one of
151 them if the message isn't to be multipart).
152 --file path
154 --file-auto path
155 --file-attach path
156 --attach path
157 --string str
158 --body str
159 Use the contents of the file path or the literal string str as the
160 body of this part.
161 --file-auto causes the Content-Type to be set based on the file's
163 name, if possible.
164 --file-attach does that and sets the --attachment name as well.
166 Be sure to include the trailing newline on str unless there really
168 isn't supposed to be one. If you leave the trailing newline off
169 the part will have to be encoded in "base64" (because
170 "quoted-printable" has an artificial limitation which prevents it
171 from being able to encode such a data stream).
172 --attach is an alias for --file-attach, and --body is an alias for
174 --string.
175 --subpart-file path
177 --subpart-string str
178 Use either the contents of path or str itself as the body of this
179 part, but treat it as a subpart. This means that the data contains
180 both some headers and some text. It also means that you can't use
181 --type or --encoding for this part.
182 Normally the path or str will have been generated by a different
184 invocation of mime-construct which was given the --subpart switch.
185 Arguments to switches which take a file name (such as --file and
187 --subpart-file) can have some magic. If there is no file with the path
188 supplied a regular Perl open() is done on it. See "EXAMPLES".
189
191 The examples assume that $nl contains a newline. The other variables
192 used are I hope self-explanatory.
193 Send a simple message.
195 mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject 'hi there' --string "$body"
197 Send a message which is read from stdin.
199 fortune | mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject fortune --file -
201 Send a plain text part and attach a file, setting the file's content
203 type and --attachment name automatically.
204 mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject "$file" \
206 --string "Here's the file I told you about.$nl" \
207 --file-attach "$file"
208 Most people think of attachments as multipart messages, but they don't
210 have to be. This generates a zip of all the files in the current
211 directory and sends them as an attachment but as a single part message.
212 zip -q - * |
214 mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject 'zipped directory' \
215 --attachment dir.zip --type application/zip --file -
216 You can use the full expressiveness of Perl's open() when constructing
218 file names. Eg, you can run processes XXX bad examples, there's no
219 file names
220 mime-construct --to "$recip" --subject "$subject" \
222 --string "Here are those two files you wanted.$nl" \
223 --type application/x-gzip --attachment file1.gz --file 'gzip -c file1 |' \
224 --type application/x-gzip --attachment file1.gz --file 'gzip -c file2 |'
225 or read from alternate file descriptors ("<&=4" to read from file
227 descriptor 4) or whatever. See perlopentut for a tutorial.
228 Here's an example of using a separate invocation of mime-construct to
230 create a subpart. This creates a message which has two parts at the
231 top level. The first part is some text, the second part is a digest.
232 The digest itself is a multipart message which contains a number of
233 message/rfc822 parts.
234 msg_args=
236 for msg in $msg_list
237 do
238 msg_args="$msg_args --type message/rfc822 --file $msg"
239 done
240 set fnord
242 for recip in $recip_list
243 do
244 set "$@" --bcc $recip
245 done
246 shift
247 mime-construct --subpart --multipart multipart/digest $msg_args |
249 mime-construct \
250 --header "To: Digest recipients:;$nl" \
251 --subject 'Foo digest' \
252 "$@" \
253 --file "$introduction" \
254 --subpart-file -
255 Here is how to send an encrypted messages (multipart/encrypted, as
257 defined in RFC 1847). You use mime-construct "--subpart" to generate
258 the real message you want to send (which can be kind of MIME message --
259 non-text, multi-part, what have you), then encrypt that and use another
260 mime-construct to contruct and send the multipart/encrypted message
261 which contains it.
262 enc_type=application/pgp-encrypted
264 enc_params="Version: 1$nl"
265 mime-construct --subpart --file body --file-auto image.jpg |
267 gpg --encrypt --armor -r "$recip" |
268 mime-construct --output \
269 --to "$recip" \
270 --subject "$subject" \
271 --multipart "multipart/encrypted; protocol=\"$enc_type\"" \
272 --type "$enc_type" \
273 --string "$enc_params" \
274 --type application/octet-stream \
275 --file -
276
278 The body of the message is always held in memory, so you can expect
279 problems if you work with bodies which are large compared to the amount
280 of memory you've got.
281
283 The code is licensed under the GNU GPL. Check
284 http://www.argon.org/~roderick/ for updated versions.
285
287 Roderick Schertler <roderick@argon.org>
288perl v5.38.0 2023-07-21 MIME-CONSTRUCT(1)