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 };

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