NAME

Mail::Audit - Library for creating easy mail filters

SYNOPSIS

use Mail::Audit; # use Mail::Audit qw(...plugins...);
my $mail = Mail::Audit->new(emergency=>"~/emergency_mbox");
$mail->pipe("listgate p5p")            if $mail->from =~ /perl5-porters/;
$mail->accept("perl")                  if $mail->from =~ /perl/;
$mail->reject("We do not accept spam") if $mail->rblcheck();
$mail->ignore                          if $mail->subject =~ /boring/i;
...
$mail->noexit(1); $mail->accept("~/Mail/Archive/%Y%m%d"); $mail->noexit(0);
$mail->accept()

DESCRIPTION

procmail is nasty. It has a tortuous and complicated recipe format, and I don't like it. I wanted something flexible whereby I could filter my mail using Perl tests.

Mail::Audit was inspired by Tom Christiansen's audit_mail and deliverlib programs. It allows a piece of email to be logged, examined, accepted into a mailbox, filtered, resent elsewhere, rejected, replied to, and so on. It's designed to allow you to easily create filter programs to stick in a .forward file or similar.

Mail::Audit groks MIME; when appropriate, it subclasses MIME::Entity. Read the MIME::Tools man page for details.

CONSTRUCTOR

new(%options)

The constructor reads a mail message from STDIN (or, if the data option is set, from an array reference) and creates a Mail::Audit object from it.

Other options include the accept, reject or pipe keys, which specify subroutine references to override the methods with those names.

You are encouraged to specify an emergency argument and check for the appearance of messages in that mailbox on a regular basis. If for any reason an accept() is unsuccessful, the message will be saved to the emergency mailbox instead. If no emergency mailbox is defined, messages will be deferred back to the MTA, where they will show up in your mailq.

You may also specify log => $logfile to write a debugging log; you can set the verbosity of the log with the loglevel key, on a scale of 1 to 4. If you specify a log level without a log file, logging will be written to /tmp/you-audit.log where you is replaced by your user name.

Usually, the delivery methods accept, pipe, and resend are final; Mail::Audit will terminate when they are done. If you specify noexit => 1, Mail::Audit will not exit after completing the above actions, but continue running your script.

The reject delivery method is always final; noexit has no effect.

Percent (%) signs seen in arguments to accept and pipe do not undergo strftime interpolation by default. If you want this, use the interpolate_strftime option. You can override the "global" interpolate_strftime option by passing an overriding option to accept and pipe.

By default, MIME messages are automatically recognized and parsed. This is potentially expensive; if you don't want MIME parsing, use the nomime option.

DELIVERY METHODS

accept($where, ...)

You can choose to accept the mail into a mailbox by calling the accept method; with no argument, this accepts to /var/spool/mail/you. The mailbox is opened append-write, then locked LOCK_EX, the mail written and then the mailbox unlocked and closed. If Mail::Audit sees that you have a maildir style system, where /var/spool/mail/you is a directory, it'll deliver in maildir style. If the path you specify does not exist, Mail::Audit will assume mbox, unless it ends in /, which means maildir.

If multiple maildirs are given, Mail::Audit will use hardlinks to deliver to them, so that multiple hardlinks point to the same underlying file. (If the maildirs turn out to be on multiple filesystems, you get multiple files.)

If you want "%" signs to be expanded according to strftime(3), you can pass accept the option interpolate_strftime:

accept( {interpolate_strftime=>1}, file1, file2, ... );

"interpolate_strftime" is not enabled by default for two reasons: backward compatibility (though nobody I know has a % in any mail folder name) and username interpolation: many people like to save messages by their correspondent's username, and that username may contain a % sign. If you are one of these people, you should

$username =~ s/%/%%/g;

If your arguments contain "/", accept will create arbitarily deep subdirectories accordingly. Untaint your input by saying

$username =~ s,/,-,g;

By default, accept is final; Mail::Audit will terminate after successfully accepting the message. If you want to keep going, set noexit.

If for any reason accept is unable to write the message (eg. you're over quota), Mail::Audit will attempt delivery to the emergency mailbox. If accept was called with multiple destinations, the emergency action will only be taken if the message couldn't be delivered to any of the desired destinations. By default the emergency mailbox is set to the system mailbox. If we were unable to save to the emergency mailbox, the message will be deferred back into the MTA's queue. This happens whether or not noexit is set, so if you observe that some of your accepts somehow aren't getting run, check your mailq.

If this isn't how you want local delivery to happen, you'll need to override this method.

reject($reason)

This rejects the email; it will be bounced back to the sender as undeliverable. If a reason is given, this will be included in the bounce.

This is a final delivery method. The noexit option has no effect here.

resend($address)

Bounces the email in its entirety to another address.

This is a final delivery method. Set noexit if you want to keep going.

At this time this method is not overrideable by an argument to new.

pipe($program)

This opens a pipe to an external program and feeds the mail to it.

This is a final delivery method. Set noexit if you want to keep going.

ignore

This merely ignores the email, dropping it into the bit bucket for eternity.

This is a final delivery method. Set noexit if you want to keep going.

reply (body => "...", %options)

Sends an autoreply to the sender of the message. Return value: the recipient address of the reply.

Recognized content-related options are: from, subject, cc, bcc, body. The "To" field defaults to the incoming message's "Reply-To" and "From" fields. body should be a single multiline string.

Set the option EVEN_IF_FROM_DAEMON to send a reply even if the original message was from some sort of automated agent. What that set, only X-Loop will stop loops.

If you use this method, use KillDups to keep track of who you've autoreplied to, so you don't autoreply more than once.

use Mail::Audit qw(KillDups);
$mail->reply(body=>"I am on vacation") if not $self->killdups($mail->from);

reply is not considered a final delivery method, so execution will continue after completion.

HEADER MANAGEMENT METHODS

get($header)

Retrieves the named header from the mail message.

put_header($header, $value)

Inserts a new header into the mail message with the given value.

replace_header($header, $value)

Removes the old header, adds a new one.

delete_header($header)

Guess.

MISCELLANEOUS METHODS

tidy

Tidies up the email as per Mail::Internet. If the message is a MIME message, nothing happens.

noexit( 0 or 1 )

Toggle noexit.

ATTRIBUTE METHODS

The following attributes correspond to fields in the mail:

• from

• to

• subject

• cc

• bcc

• body

  Returns a reference to an array of lines in the body of the email.

• header

  Returns the header as a single string.

• is_mime

  am I a MIME message? If so, MIME::Entity methods apply. Otherwise, Mail::Internet methods apply.

LICENSE

The usual. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

BUGS

http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/Bugs.html?Dist=Mail-Audit

CAVEATS

If your mailbox file in /var/spool/mail/ doesn't already exist, you may need to use your standard system MDA to create it. After it's been created, Mail::Audit should be able to append to it. Mail::Audit may not be able to create /var/spool/mail because programs run from .forward don't inherit the special permissions needed to create files in that directory.

AUTHORS

Simon Cozens <simon@cpan.org> wrote versions 1 and 2.

Meng Weng Wong <mengwong@pobox.com> turned a petite demure v2.0 into a raging bloated v2.1, adding MIME support, emergency recovery, filename interpolation, and autoreply features.

SEE ALSO

Mail::Internet, Mail::SMTP, Mail::Audit::List, Mail::Audit::PGP, Mail::Audit::MAPS, Mail::Audit::KillDups, Mail::Audit::Razor...