NAME

Email::Address - RFC 2822 Address Parsing and Creation

SYNOPSIS

  use Email::Address;

  my @addresses = Email::Address->parse($line);
  my $address   = Email::Address->new(Casey => 'casey@localhost');

  print $address->format;

DESCRIPTION

This class implements a complete RFC 2822 parser that locates email addresses in strings and returns a list of Email::Address objects found. Alternatley you may construct objects manually. The goal of this software is to be correct, and very very fast.

Package Variables

Several regular expressions used in this package are useful to others. For convenience, these variables are declared as package variables that you may access from your program.

These regular expressions conform to the rules specified in RFC 2822.

You can access these variables using the full namespace. If you want short names, define them yourself.

  my $addr_spec = $Email::Address::addr_spec;

$Email::Address::addr_spec

This regular expression defined what an email address is allowed to look like.

$Email::Address::angle_addr

This regular expression defines an $addr_spec wrapped in angle brackets.

$Email::Address::name_addr

This regular expression defines what an email address can look like with an optional preceeding display name, also known as the phrase.

$Email::Address::mailbox

This is the complete regular expression defining an RFC 2822 emial address with an optional preceeding display name and optional following comment.

Class Methods

parse

  my @addrs = Email::Address->parse(
      q[me@local, Casey <me@local>, "Casey" <me@local> (West)]
  );

This method returns a list of Email::Address objects it finds in the input string.

The specification for an email address allows for infinitley nestable comments. That's nice in theory, but a little over done. By default this module allows for two (2) levels of nested comments. If you think you need more, modify the $Email::Address::COMMENT_NEST_LEVEL package variable to allow more.

  $Email::Address::COMMENT_NEST_LEVEL = 10; # I'm deep

The reason for this hardly limiting limitation is simple: efficiency.

new

  my $address = Email::Address->new(undef, 'casey@local');
  my $address = Email::Address->new('Casey West', 'casey@local');
  my $address = Email::Address->new(undef, 'casey@local', '(Casey)');

Constructs and returns a new Email::Address object. Takes four positional arguments: phrase, email, and comment, and original string.

The original string should only really be set using parse.

purge_cache

  Email::Address->purge_cache;

One way this module stays fast is with internal caches. Caches live in memory and there is the remote possibility that you will have a memory problem. In the off chance that you think you're one of those people, this class method will empty those caches.

I've loaded over 12000 objects and not encountered a memory problem.

Instance Methods

phrase

  my $phrase = $address->phrase;
  $address->phrase( "Me oh my" );

Accessor and mutator for the phrase portion of an address.

address

  my $addr = $address->address;
  $addr->address( "me@PROTECTED.com" );

Accessor and mutator for the address portion of an address.

comment

  my $comment = $address->comment;
  $address->comment( "(Work address)" );

Accessor and mutator for the comment portion of an address.

original

  my $orig = $address->original;

Accessor for the original address found when parsing, or passed to new.

host

  my $host = $address->host;

Accessor for the host portion of an address's address.

user

  my $user = $address->user;

Accessor for the user portion of an address's address.

format

  my $printable = $address->format;

Returns a properly formatted RFC 2822 address representing the object.

name

  my $name = $address->name;

This method tries very hard to determine the name belonging to the address. First the phrase is checked. If that doesn't work out the comment is looked into. If that still doesn't work out, the user portion of the address is returned.

This method does not try to massage any name it identifies and instead leaves that up to someone else. Who is it to decide if someone wants their name capitalized, or if they're Irish?

Overloaded Operators

stringify

  print "I have your email address, $address.";

Objects stringify to format by default. It's possible that you don't like that idea. Okay, then, you can change it by modifying $Email:Address::STRINGIFY. Please consider modifying this package variable using local. You might step on someone else's toes if you don't.

  {
    local $Email::Address::STRINGIFY = 'address';
    print "I have your address, $address.";
    #   geeknest.com
  }
  print "I have your address, $address.";
  #   "Casey West" <casey@geeknest.com>

Did I Mention Fast?

On my 877Mhz 12" Apple Powerbook I can run the distributed benchmarks and get results like this.

  $ perl -Ilib bench/ea-vs-ma.pl bench/corpus.txt 5 
                 s/iter  Mail::Address Email::Address
  Mail::Address    1.59             --           -31%
  Email::Address   1.10            45%             --
  $ perl -Ilib bench/ea-vs-ma.pl bench/corpus.txt 25
                 s/iter  Mail::Address Email::Address
  Mail::Address    1.58             --           -60%
  Email::Address  0.630           151%             --
  $ perl -Ilib bench/ea-vs-ma.pl bench/corpus.txt 50
                 s/iter  Mail::Address Email::Address
  Mail::Address    1.58             --           -65%
  Email::Address  0.558           182%             --

SEE ALSO

Email::Simple, perl.

AUTHOR

Casey West, <casey@geeknest.com>.

COPYRIGHT

  Copyright (c) 2004 Casey West.  All rights reserved.
  This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
  under the same terms as Perl itself.