Mail::Sendmail(3pm) User Contributed Perl Documentation Mail::Sendmail(3pm)
NAME
Mail::Sendmail - Simple platform independent mailer
SYNOPSIS
use Mail::Sendmail;
%mail = ( To => 'you@there.com',
From => 'me@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 containing 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@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@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 version $Mail::Sendmail::VERSION",
);
$mail{Smtp} = 'special_server.for-this-message-only.domain.com';
$mail{'X-custom'} = 'My custom additional 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.
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 reliable 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/.
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)
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 1998-2017 Milivoj Ivkovic. All rights reserved. This
program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.36.0 2022-12-07 Mail::Sendmail(3pm)
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