Parsing a Unix Mbox

[Anonymous Monk]

I need to read each message in a Unix Mbox and extract from each message the heading information and the message itself. I need to do edit checks on each of the above. Once I'm done, I need to move the message to an output directory and delete the message from the mailbox. I'm new to Perl. Do you recommend using a Perl module,i.e., Mail::Box? Need some guidance.

[Corion]

Yes. I really recommend Mail::Box - the documentation has some examples that should get you started, and the mail handling is painless in my opinion. Installation should be straightforward for you if you have superuser permissions on your system, otherwise a local installation of the modules will work as well.

perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ;    # The  
$d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider
($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new   #in the
HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' #  web

[Anonymous Monk]

My systems admin installed Mail::Box version 1.324; couldn't install Mail::Box version 2.015 which needs Perl 5.6. I ran the two examples in version 1.324. I need some help with using these modules. Which module do I use to extract the body of the message. Can you show me a sample script to print the body of the message. I ran the example script that loops through each message in the mbox to print the headings. I'm new to perl and perl modules. Is this task difficult to accomplish without using a module? If so could you briefly explain it to me so that I can explain it to my boss. Thanks.

[Corion]

Yes, this task is very difficult to do right without a module, and I won't explain it here, as explaining it means reformulating the mbox manpage (found here for example) and Mail::Box handles it very nicely. I have only used Mail::Box after version 2, but I guess that the basic methods haven't changed that much since :

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# Some vestige of local delivery
# For another method, have a look at Mail::LocalDelivery

use strict;
use Mail::Box;
use Mail::Box::Manager;
use Mail::Message;
use Mail::Message::Construct;

use vars qw($localmailbase $foldername);
use vars qw($mgr $folder);

$host = 'hera.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de';
$localmailbase = "/home/corion/mail/";
$foldername = "informatik";

$mgr = Mail::Box::Manager->new(folderdir => $localmailbase,
                               default_folder_type => 'mbox',
                               );
$folder = $mgr->open( folder => $foldername, access => 'rw', create =>
+ 1 );
die "Couldn't open mailfolder '$foldername' : $!\n" unless $folder;

print "Using folder ",$folder->name,"\n";
my %messageIDs;
%messageIDs = map { $_->get("Message-ID"), $_ } ($folder->messages);

my $msg;
foreach $msg ($folder->messages) {
  print "*** The content of this message is :\n";
  print $msg->body;
}

$mgr->close($folder);

I don't have access to any older Mail::Box documentation at the moment, but each message should have the body method, which returns the body of the message as a string.

perl -MHTTP::Daemon -MHTTP::Response -MLWP::Simple -e ' ;    # The  
$d = new HTTP::Daemon and fork and getprint $d->url and exit;#spider
($c = $d->accept())->get_request(); $c->send_response( new   #in the
HTTP::Response(200,$_,$_,qq(Just another Perl hacker\n))); ' #  web

[Cine]

use MIME::Parser;
use Mail::Util qw( read_mbox );
my @messages = read_mbox('filename');
my @parsed_messages = map {(new MIME::Parser)->parse($$_)} @messages;



T I M T O W T D I

[Anonymous Monk]

Can you please tell me why the above doesnt work with perl 5.18?.. I am trying to understand how to resolve error on the last line: Not a SCALAR reference at ..

[Anonymous Monk]

After RTFM , it looks both modules are deprecated and broken.. read_mbox: This method does not quote lines which accidently also start with the message seperater From: parse: DEPRECATED A ref to array of scalrs

[rah]

I've had pretty good success with Mail::Procmail. I don't know if your familiar with the procmail program, but it provides a simple, rules based means of parsing mail. You can build rules based on header lines, like to/from, you can also look for matches in the body or subject line. based on your rules, you can file, forward, reply, etc. or strip off the message body to a seperate text file (sounds like this is the capability you're looking for). I have it running in a couple of production applications and it has performed flawlessly. Fair warning though, some people absolutely detest procmail rules - grammar/syntax. In fact the mere mention of the word procmail can start 'religious' wars.