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Mail::Sendmail(3pm) - phpMan
Sendmail(3pm) User Contributed Perl Documentation Sendmail(3pm)
NAME
Mail::Sendmail - Simple platform independent mailer
SYNOPSIS
use Mail::Sendmail;
%mail = ( To => 'you AT there.com',
From => 'me AT here.com',
Message => "This is a very short message"
);
sendmail(%mail) or die $Mail::Sendmail::error;
print "OK. Log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;
DESCRIPTION
Simple platform independent e-mail from your perl script. Only requires Perl 5 and a
network connection.
Mail::Sendmail takes a hash with the message to send and sends it to your mail server. It
is intended to be very easy to setup and use. See also "FEATURES" below, and as usual,
read this documentation.
There is also a FAQ (see "NOTES").
INSTALLATION
Best
"perl -MCPAN -e "install Mail::Sendmail""
Traditional
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
Manual
Copy Sendmail.pm to Mail/ in your Perl lib directory.
(eg. c:\Perl\site\lib\Mail\
or /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/Mail/
or whatever it is on your system.
They are listed when you type C< perl -V >)
ActivePerl's PPM
Depending on your PPM version:
ppm install --location=http://alma.ch/perl/ppm Mail-Sendmail
or
ppm install http://alma.ch/perl/ppm/Mail-Sendmail.ppd
But this way you don't get a chance to have a look at other files (Changes, Todo,
test.pl, ...).
At the top of Sendmail.pm, set your default SMTP server(s), unless you specify it with
each message, or want to use the default (localhost).
Install MIME::QuotedPrint. This is not required but strongly recommended.
FEATURES
Automatic time zone detection, Date: header, MIME quoted-printable encoding (if
MIME::QuotedPrint installed), all of which can be overridden.
Bcc: and Cc: support.
Allows real names in From:, To: and Cc: fields
Doesn't send an X-Mailer: header (unless you do), and allows you to send any header(s) you
want.
Configurable retries and use of alternate servers if your mail server is down
Good plain text error reporting
Experimental support for SMTP AUTHentication
LIMITATIONS
Headers are not encoded, even if they have accented characters.
Since the whole message is in memory, it's not suitable for sending very big attached
files.
The SMTP server has to be set manually in Sendmail.pm or in your script, unless you have a
mail server on localhost.
Doesn't work on OpenVMS, I was told. Cannot test this myself.
CONFIGURATION
Default SMTP server(s)
This is probably all you want to configure. It is usually done through $mailcfg{smtp},
which you can edit at the top of the Sendmail.pm file. This is a reference to a list
of SMTP servers. You can also set it from your script:
"unshift @{$Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{'smtp'}} , 'my.mail.server';"
Alternatively, you can specify the server in the %mail hash you send from your script,
which will do the same thing:
"$mail{smtp} = 'my.mail.server';"
A future version will (hopefully) try to set useful defaults for you during the
Makefile.PL.
Other configuration settings
See %mailcfg under "DETAILS" below for other configuration options.
DETAILS
sendmail()
sendmail is the only thing exported to your namespace by default
"sendmail(%mail) || print "Error sending mail: $Mail::Sendmail::error\n";"
It takes a hash containing the full message, with keys for all headers and the body, as
well as for some specific options.
It returns 1 on success or 0 on error, and rewrites $Mail::Sendmail::error and
$Mail::Sendmail::log.
Keys are NOT case-sensitive.
The colon after headers is not necessary.
The Body part key can be called 'Body', 'Message' or 'Text'.
The SMTP server key can be called 'Smtp' or 'Server'. If the connection to this one fails,
the other ones in $mailcfg{smtp} will still be tried.
The following headers are added unless you specify them yourself:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: 'text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"'
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
or (if MIME::QuotedPrint not installed)
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Date: [string returned by time_to_date()]
If you wish to use an envelope sender address different than the From: address, set
$mail{Sender} in your %mail hash.
The following are not exported by default, but you can still access them with their full
name, or request their export on the use line like in: "use Mail::Sendmail qw(sendmail
$address_rx time_to_date);"
embedding options in your %mail hash
The following options can be set in your %mail hash. The corresponding keys will be
removed before sending the mail.
$mail{smtp} or $mail{server}
The SMTP server to try first. It will be added
$mail{port}
This option will be removed. To use a non-standard port, set it in your server name:
$mail{server}='my.smtp.server:2525' will try to connect to port 2525 on server
my.smtp.server
$mail{auth}
This must be a reference to a hash containg all your authentication options:
$mail{auth} = \%options; or $mail{auth} = {user=>"username", password=>"password",
method=>"DIGEST-MD5", required=>0 };
user
username
pass or password
password
method
optional method. compared (stripped down) to available methods. If empty, will try
all available.
required
optional. defaults to false. If set to true, no delivery will be attempted if
authentication fails. If false or undefined, and authentication fails or is not
available, sending is tried without.
(different auth for different servers?)
Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date()
convert time ( as from "time()" ) to an RFC 822 compliant string for the Date header. See
also "%Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg".
$Mail::Sendmail::error
When you don't run with the -w flag, the module sends no errors to STDERR, but puts
anything it has to complain about in here. You should probably always check if it says
something.
$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.
A correct regex for valid e-mail addresses was written by one of the judges in the
obfuscated Perl contest... :-) It is quite big. This one is an attempt to a reasonable
compromise, and should accept all real-world internet style addresses. The domain part is
required and comments or characters that would need to be quoted are not supported.
Example:
$rx = $Mail::Sendmail::address_rx;
if (/$rx/) {
$address=$1;
$user=$2;
$domain=$3;
}
%Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg
This hash contains installation-wide configuration options. You normally edit it once (if
ever) in Sendmail.pm and forget about it, but you could also access it from your scripts.
For readability, I'll assume you have imported it (with something like "use Mail::Sendmail
qw(sendmail %mailcfg)").
The keys are not case-sensitive: they are all converted to lowercase before use. Writing
"$mailcfg{Port} = 2525;" is OK: the default $mailcfg{port} (25) will be deleted and
replaced with your new value of 2525.
$mailcfg{smtp}
"$mailcfg{smtp} = [qw(localhost my.other.mail.server)];"
This is a reference to a list of smtp servers, so if your main server is down, the
module tries the next one. If one of your servers uses a special port, add it to the
server name with a colon in front, to override the default port (like in
my.special.server:2525).
Default: localhost.
$mailcfg{from}
"$mailcfg{from} = 'Mailing script me AT mydomain.com';"
From address used if you don't supply one in your script. Should not be of type
'user@localhost' since that may not be valid on the recipient's host.
Default: undefined.
$mailcfg{mime}
"$mailcfg{mime} = 1;"
Set this to 0 if you don't want any automatic MIME encoding. You normally don't need
this, the module should 'Do the right thing' anyway.
Default: 1;
$mailcfg{retries}
"$mailcfg{retries} = 1;"
How many times should the connection to the same SMTP server be retried in case of a
failure.
Default: 1;
$mailcfg{delay}
"$mailcfg{delay} = 1;"
Number of seconds to wait between retries. This delay also happens before trying the
next server in the list, if the retries for the current server have been exhausted.
For CGI scripts, you want few retries and short delays to return with a results page
before the http connection times out. For unattended scripts, you may want to use many
retries and long delays to have a good chance of your mail being sent even with
temporary failures on your network.
Default: 1 (second);
$mailcfg{tz}
"$mailcfg{tz} = '+0800';"
Normally, your time zone is set automatically, from the difference between "time()"
and "gmtime()". This allows you to override automatic detection in cases where your
system is confused (such as some Win32 systems in zones which do not use daylight
savings time: see Microsoft KB article Q148681)
Default: undefined (automatic detection at run-time).
$mailcfg{port}
"$mailcfg{port} = 25;"
Port used when none is specified in the server name.
Default: 25.
$mailcfg{debug}
"$mailcfg{debug} = 0;"
Prints stuff to STDERR. Current maximum is 6, which prints the whole SMTP session,
except data exceeding 500 bytes.
Default: 0;
$Mail::Sendmail::VERSION
The package version number (you can not import this one)
Configuration variables from previous versions
The following global variables were used in version 0.74 for configuration. As from
version 0.78_1, they are not supported anymore. Use the %mailcfg hash if you need to
access the configuration from your scripts.
$Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_server
$Mail::Sendmail::default_smtp_port
$Mail::Sendmail::default_sender
$Mail::Sendmail::TZ
$Mail::Sendmail::connect_retries
$Mail::Sendmail::retry_delay
$Mail::Sendmail::use_MIME
ANOTHER EXAMPLE
use Mail::Sendmail;
print "Testing Mail::Sendmail version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION\n";
print "Default server: $Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{smtp}->[0]\n";
print "Default sender: $Mail::Sendmail::mailcfg{from}\n";
%mail = (
#To => 'No to field this time, only Bcc and Cc',
#From => 'not needed, use default',
Bcc => 'Someone <him AT there.com>, Someone else her AT there.com',
# only addresses are extracted from Bcc, real names disregarded
Cc => 'Yet someone else <xz AT whatever.com>',
# Cc will appear in the header. (Bcc will not)
Subject => 'Test message',
'X-Mailer' => "Mail::Sendmail version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION",
);
$mail{Smtp} = 'special_server.for-this-message-only.domain.com';
$mail{'X-custom'} = 'My custom additionnal header';
$mail{'mESSaGE : '} = "The message key looks terrible, but works.";
# cheat on the date:
$mail{Date} = Mail::Sendmail::time_to_date( time() - 86400 );
if (sendmail %mail) { print "Mail sent OK.\n" }
else { print "Error sending mail: $Mail::Sendmail::error \n" }
print "\n\$Mail::Sendmail::log says:\n", $Mail::Sendmail::log;
Also see http://alma.ch/perl/Mail-Sendmail-FAQ.html for examples of HTML mail and sending
attachments.
CHANGES
Main changes since version 0.79:
Experimental SMTP AUTH support (LOGIN PLAIN CRAM-MD5 DIGEST-MD5)
Fix bug where one refused RCPT TO: would abort everything
send EHLO, and parse response
Better handling of multi-line responses, and better error-messages
Non-conforming line-endings also normalized in headers
Now keeps the Sender header if it was used. Previous versions only used it for the MAIL
FROM: command and deleted it.
See the Changes file for the full history. If you don't have it because you installed
through PPM, you can also find the latest one on
http://alma.ch/perl/scripts/Sendmail/Changes.
On Debian systems Sys::Hostname::Long is tried before Sys::Hostname in order get a fully
qualified domain name.
AUTHOR
Milivoj Ivkovic <mi\x40alma.ch> ("\x40" is "@" of course)
NOTES
MIME::QuotedPrint is used by default on every message if available. It allows reliable
sending of accented characters, and also takes care of too long lines (which can happen in
HTML mails). It is available in the MIME-Base64 package at
http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/MIME/ or through PPM.
Look at http://alma.ch/perl/Mail-Sendmail-FAQ.html for additional info (CGI, examples of
sending attachments, HTML mail etc...)
You can use this module freely. (Someone complained this is too vague. So, more
precisely: do whatever you want with it, but be warned that terrible things will happen to
you if you use it badly, like for sending spam, or ...?)
Thanks to the many users who sent me feedback, bug reports, suggestions, etc. And please
excuse me if I forgot to answer your mail. I am not always reliabe in answering mail. I
intend to set up a mailing list soon.
Last revision: 06.02.2003. Latest version should be available on CPAN:
http://www.cpan.org/modules/by-authors/id/M/MI/MIVKOVIC/.
perl v5.10.0 2008-08-26 Sendmail(3pm)
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