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A Really Ruby Mail Library

1,629 commits
Branch: master

11 branches

51 releases

157 contributors

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koic committed with jeremy Fix deprecated warnings in Ruby 2.4.0+

gemfiles
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patches
reference
spec
tasks
.gitignore
.travis.yml
Appraisals
CHANGELOG.rdoc
CONTRIBUTING.md
Dependencies.txt
Gemfile
MITLICENSE
README.md
ROADMAP
Rakefile
TODO.rdoc
mail.gemspec
test.rb

rake requires 1.9.3 starting with v11.0.0

Fix deprecated warnings in Ruby 2.4.0+
Adding patch file
Replace Treetop parser with a Ragel based parser
Respect stderr convention by using $stderr instead of STDERR
Ragel: drop source line numbers from generated parsers since any defi
Modular Ragel definitions and incremental parser builds
CI: allow jruby9.0.5.0 failures,, needs work
update gemfiles and exclude jruby
Fix issue decoding base64 on some rubies
Add advice for iterating on pull requests
Treetop is no longer a dependency
Pin mimetypes to < 3.0 on Ruby 1.9.3
Version bump to 2.6.4 and release
Merge pull request #962 from pra85/patch1
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Fixing up TODO and docs
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README.md

Mail

Introduction
Mail is an internet library for Ruby that is designed to handle emails generation, parsing and sending in a simple,
rubyesque manner.
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The purpose of this library is to provide a single point of access to handle all email functions, including sending and
receiving emails. All network type actions are done through proxy methods to Net::SMTP, Net::POP3 etc.
Built from my experience with TMail, it is designed to be a pure ruby implementation that makes generating, sending
and parsing emails a no brainer.
It is also designed from the ground up to work with the more modern versions of Ruby. This is because Ruby > 1.9
handles text encodings much more wonderfully than Ruby 1.8.x and so these features have been taken full advantage
of in this library allowing Mail to handle a lot more messages more cleanly than TMail. Mail does run on Ruby 1.8.x...
it's just not as fun to code.
Finally, Mail has been designed with a very simple object oriented system that really opens up the email messages
you are parsing, if you know what you are doing, you can fiddle with every last bit of your email directly.

Donations

Mail has been downloaded millions of times, by people around the world, in fact, it represents more than 1% of all
gems downloaded.
It is (like all open source software) a labour of love and something I am doing with my own free time. If you would like
to say thanks, please feel free to make a donation and feel free to send me a nice email :)

Compatibility
Every Mail commit is tested by Travis on the following platforms
ruby1.8.7 [ i686 ]
ruby1.9.2 [ x86_64 ]
ruby1.9.3 [ x86_64 ]
ruby2.0.0 [ x86_64 ]
ruby2.1.2 [ x86_64 ]
rubyhead [ x86_64 ]
jruby [ x86_64 ]
jrubyhead [ x86_64 ]
rbx2 [ x86_64 ]
Testing a specific mime type (needed for 1.8.7 for example) can be done manually with:
BUNDLE_GEMFILE=gemfiles/mime_types_1.16.gemfile (bundle check || bundle) && rake

Discussion
If you want to discuss mail with like minded individuals, please subscribe to the Google Group.

Current Capabilities of Mail

RFC2822 Support, Reading and Writing

RFC20452049 Support for multipart emails
Support for creating multipart alternate emails
Support for reading multipart/report emails & getting details from such
Support for multibyte emails needs quite a lot of work and testing
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Wrappers for File, Net/POP3, Net/SMTP

Auto encoding of non USASCII header fields
Auto encoding of non USASCII bodies
Mail is RFC2822 compliant now, that is, it can parse and generate valid USASCII emails. There are a few obsoleted
syntax emails that it will have problems with, but it also is quite robust, meaning, if it finds something it doesn't
understand it will not crash, instead, it will skip the problem and keep parsing. In the case of a header it doesn't
understand, it will initialise the header as an optional unstructured field and continue parsing.
This means Mail won't (ever) crunch your data (I think).
You can also create MIME emails. There are helper methods for making a multipart/alternate email for text/plain and
text/html (the most common pair) and you can manually create any other type of MIME email.

Roadmap

Next TODO:
Improve MIME support for character sets in headers, currently works, mostly, needs refinement.

Testing Policy

Basically... we do BDD on Mail. No method gets written in Mail without a corresponding or covering spec. We expect
as a minimum 100% coverage measured by RCov. While this is not perfect by any measure, it is pretty good.
Additionally, all functional tests from TMail are to be passing before the gem gets released.
It also means you can be sure Mail will behave correctly.
Note: If you care about core extensions (aka "monkeypatching"), please read the Core Extensions section near the
end of this README.

API Policy

No API removals within a single point release. All removals to be deprecated with warnings for at least one MINOR
point release before removal.
Also, all private or protected methods to be declared as such though this is still I/P.

Installation

Installation is fairly simple, I host mail on rubygems, so you can just do:
# gem install mail

Encodings
If you didn't know, handling encodings in Emails is not as straight forward as you would hope.
I have tried to simplify it some:
1. All objects that can render into an email, have an #encoded method. Encoded will return the object as a complete
string ready to send in the mail system, that is, it will include the header field and value and CRLF at the end and
wrapped as needed.
2. All objects that can render into an email, have a #decoded method. Decoded will return the object's "value" only
as a string. This means it will not include the header fields (like 'To:' or 'Subject:').
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3. By default, calling #to_s on a container object will call its encoded method, while #to_s on a field object will
call its decoded method. So calling #to_s on a Mail object will return the mail, all encoded ready to send, while
calling #to_s on the From field or the body will return the decoded value of the object. The header object of Mail
is considered a container. If you are in doubt, call #encoded, or #decoded explicitly, this is safer if you are not
sure.
4. Structured fields that have parameter values that can be encoded (e.g. ContentType) will provide decoded
parameter values when you call the parameter names as methods against the object.
5. Structured fields that have parameter values that can be encoded (e.g. ContentType) will provide encoded
parameter values when you call the parameter names through the object.parameters[''] method call.

Contributing

Please do! Contributing is easy in Mail. Please read the CONTRIBUTING.md document for more info

Usage

All major mail functions should be able to happen from the Mail module. So, you should be able to just require
'mail' to get started.

Making an email
mail = Mail.new do
from
'[email protected]'
to
'[email protected]'
subject 'This is a test email'
body
File.read('body.txt')
end
mail.to_s #=> "From: [email protected]\r\nTo: you@...

Making an email, have it your way:

mail = Mail.new do
body File.read('body.txt')
end
mail['from'] = '[email protected]'
mail[:to]
= '[email protected]'
mail.subject = 'This is a test email'
mail.header['X-Custom-Header'] = 'custom value'
mail.to_s #=> "From: [email protected]\r\nTo: you@...

Don't Worry About Message IDs:

mail = Mail.new do
to
'[email protected]'
body 'Some simple body'
end
mail.to_s =~ /Message\-ID: <[\d\w_]+@.+.mail/ #=> 27

Mail will automatically add a MessageID field if it is missing and give it a unique, random MessageID along the lines
of:
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<[email protected]>

Or do worry about MessageIDs:

mail = Mail.new do
to
'[email protected]'
message_id '<[email protected]>'
body
'Some simple body'
end
mail.to_s =~ /Message\-ID: <[email protected]>/ #=> 27

Mail will take the message_id you assign to it trusting that you know what you are doing.

Sending an email:

Mail defaults to sending via SMTP to local host port 25. If you have a sendmail or postfix daemon running on this port,
sending email is as easy as:
Mail.deliver do
from
'[email protected]'
to
'[email protected]'
subject 'Here is the image you wanted'
body
File.read('body.txt')
add_file '/full/path/to/somefile.png'
end

or
mail = Mail.new do
from
'[email protected]'
to
'[email protected]'
subject 'Here is the image you wanted'
body
File.read('body.txt')
add_file :filename => 'somefile.png', :content => File.read('/somefile.png')
end
mail.deliver!

Sending via sendmail can be done like so:

mail = Mail.new do
from
'[email protected]'
to
'[email protected]'
subject 'Here is the image you wanted'
body
File.read('body.txt')
add_file :filename => 'somefile.png', :content => File.read('/somefile.png')
end
mail.delivery_method :sendmail
mail.deliver

Sending via smtp (for example to mailcatcher)

Mail.defaults do
delivery_method :smtp, address: "localhost", port: 1025
end

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Exim requires its own delivery manager, and can be used like so:
mail.delivery_method :exim, :location => "/usr/bin/exim"
mail.deliver

Getting emails from a pop server:

You can configure Mail to receive email using retriever_method within Mail.defaults:
Mail.defaults do
retriever_method :pop3, :address
:port
:user_name
:password
:enable_ssl
end

=>
=>
=>
=>
=>

"pop.gmail.com",
995,
'<username>',
'<password>',
true

You can access incoming email in a number of ways.

The most recent email:
Mail.all
Mail.first
Mail.last

#=> Returns an array of all emails

#=> Returns the first unread email
#=> Returns the last unread email

The first 10 emails sorted by date in ascending order:

emails = Mail.find(:what => :first, :count => 10, :order => :asc)
emails.length #=> 10

Or even all emails:

emails = Mail.all
emails.length #=> LOTS!

Reading an Email
mail = Mail.read('/path/to/message.eml')
mail.envelope_from
mail.from.addresses
mail.sender.address
mail.to
mail.cc
mail.subject
mail.date.to_s
mail.message_id
mail.body.decoded

#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>

'[email protected]'
['[email protected]', '[email protected]']
'[email protected]'
'[email protected]'
'[email protected]'
"This is the subject"
'21 Nov 1997 09:55:06 -0600'
'<[email protected]>'
'This is the body of the email...

Many more methods available.

Reading a Multipart Email

mail = Mail.read('multipart_email')
mail.multipart?
mail.parts.length

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#=> true
#=> 2

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mail.body.preamble
#=> "Text before the first part"
mail.body.epilogue
#=> "Text after the last part"
mail.parts.map { |p| p.content_type } #=> ['text/plain', 'application/pdf']
mail.parts.map { |p| p.class }
#=> [Mail::Message, Mail::Message]
mail.parts[0].content_type_parameters #=> {'charset' => 'ISO-8859-1'}
mail.parts[1].content_type_parameters #=> {'name' => 'my.pdf'}

Mail generates a tree of parts. Each message has many or no parts. Each part is another message which can have
many or no parts.
A message will only have parts if it is a multipart/mixed or multipart/related content type and has a boundary defined.

Testing and extracting attachments

mail.attachments.each do | attachment |
# Attachments is an AttachmentsList object containing a
# number of Part objects
if (attachment.content_type.start_with?('image/'))
# extracting images for example...
filename = attachment.filename
begin
File.open(images_dir + filename, "w+b", 0644) {|f| f.write attachment.body.decoded}
rescue => e
puts "Unable to save data for #{filename} because #{e.message}"
end
end
end

Writing and sending a multipart/alternative (html and text) email

Mail makes some basic assumptions and makes doing the common thing as simple as possible.... (asking a lot from a
mail library)
mail = Mail.deliver do
to
'[email protected]'
from
'Mikel Lindsaar <[email protected]>'
subject 'First multipart email sent with Mail'
text_part do
body 'This is plain text'
end
html_part do
content_type 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
body '<h1>This is HTML</h1>'
end
end

Mail then delivers the email at the end of the block and returns the resulting Mail::Message object, which you can
then inspect if you so desire...
puts mail.to_s #=>
To: [email protected]
From: Mikel Lindsaar <[email protected]>
Subject: First multipart email sent with Mail
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=--==_mimepart_4a914f0c911be_6f0f1ab8026659
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:15:46 +1000
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

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----==_mimepart_4a914f0c911be_6f0f1ab8026659
Content-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:15:46 +1000
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
This is plain text
----==_mimepart_4a914f0c911be_6f0f1ab8026659
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-ID: <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:15:46 +1000
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<h1>This is HTML</h1>
----==_mimepart_4a914f0c911be_6f0f1ab8026659--

Mail inserts the content transfer encoding, the mime version, the contentid's and handles the contenttype and
boundary.
Mail assumes that if your text in the body is only usascii, that your transfer encoding is 7bit and it is text/plain. You
can override this by explicitly declaring it.

Making Multipart/Alternate, without a block

You don't have to use a block with the text and html part included, you can just do it declaratively. However, you need
to add Mail::Parts to an email, not Mail::Messages.
mail = Mail.new do
to
'[email protected]'
from
'Mikel Lindsaar <[email protected]>'
subject 'First multipart email sent with Mail'
end
text_part = Mail::Part.new do
body 'This is plain text'
end
html_part = Mail::Part.new do
content_type 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
body '<h1>This is HTML</h1>'
end
mail.text_part = text_part
mail.html_part = html_part

Results in the same email as done using the block form

Getting error reports from an email:

@mail = Mail.read('/path/to/bounce_message.eml')
@mail.bounced?
@mail.final_recipient
@mail.action
@mail.error_status
@mail.diagnostic_code
@mail.retryable?

#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>
#=>

true
rfc822;[email protected]
failed
5.5.0
smtp;550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
false

Attaching and Detaching Files

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You can just read the file off an absolute path, Mail will try to guess the mime_type and will encode the file in Base64
for you.
@mail = Mail.new
@mail.add_file("/path/to/file.jpg")
@mail.parts.first.attachment? #=> true
@mail.parts.first.content_transfer_encoding.to_s #=> 'base64'
@mail.attachments.first.mime_type #=> 'image/jpg'
@mail.attachments.first.filename #=> 'file.jpg'
@mail.attachments.first.decoded == File.read('/path/to/file.jpg') #=> true

Or You can pass in file_data and give it a filename, again, mail will try and guess the mime_type for you.
@mail = Mail.new
@mail.attachments['myfile.pdf'] = File.read('path/to/myfile.pdf')
@mail.parts.first.attachment? #=> true
@mail.attachments.first.mime_type #=> 'application/pdf'
@mail.attachments.first.decoded == File.read('path/to/myfile.pdf') #=> true

You can also override the guessed MIME media type if you really know better than mail (this should be rarely needed)
@mail = Mail.new
file_data = File.read('path/to/myfile.pdf')
@mail.attachments['myfile.pdf'] = { :mime_type => 'application/x-pdf',
:content => File.read('path/to/myfile.pdf') }
@mail.parts.first.mime_type #=> 'application/x-pdf'

Of course... Mail will round trip an attachment as well

@mail = Mail.new do
to
'[email protected]'
from
'Mikel Lindsaar <[email protected]>'
subject 'First multipart email sent with Mail'
text_part do
body 'Here is the attachment you wanted'
end
html_part do
content_type 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
body '<h1>Funky Title</h1><p>Here is the attachment you wanted</p>'
end
add_file '/path/to/myfile.pdf'
end
@round_tripped_mail = Mail.new(@mail.encoded)
@round_tripped_mail.attachments.length #=> 1
@round_tripped_mail.attachments.first.filename #=> 'myfile.pdf'

See "Testing and extracting attachments" above for more details.

Using Mail with Testing or Spec'ing Libraries

If mail is part of your system, you'll need a way to test it without actually sending emails, the TestMailer can do this
for you.
require 'mail'
=> true
Mail.defaults do

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delivery_method :test
end
=> #<Mail::Configuration:0x19345a8 @delivery_method=Mail::TestMailer>
Mail::TestMailer.deliveries
=> []
Mail.deliver do
to '[email protected]'
from '[email protected]'
subject 'testing'
body 'hello'
end
=> #<Mail::Message:0x19284ec ...
Mail::TestMailer.deliveries.length
=> 1
Mail::TestMailer.deliveries.first
=> #<Mail::Message:0x19284ec ...
Mail::TestMailer.deliveries.clear
=> []

There is also a set of RSpec matchers stolen/inspired by Shoulda's ActionMailer matchers (you'll want to set
delivery_method as above too):
Mail.defaults do
delivery_method :test # in practice you'd do this in spec_helper.rb
end
describe "sending an email" do
include Mail::Matchers
before(:each) do
Mail::TestMailer.deliveries.clear
Mail.deliver do
to ['[email protected]', '[email protected]']
from '[email protected]'
subject 'testing'
body 'hello'
end
end
it { should have_sent_email } # passes if any email at all was sent
it { should have_sent_email.from('[email protected]') }
it { should have_sent_email.to('[email protected]') }
# can specify a list of recipients...
it { should have_sent_email.to(['[email protected]', '[email protected]']) }
# ...or chain recipients together
it { should have_sent_email.to('[email protected]').to('[email protected]') }
it { should have_sent_email.with_subject('testing') }
it { should have_sent_email.with_body('hello') }
# Can match subject or body with a regex
# (or anything that responds_to? :match)
it { should have_sent_email.matching_subject(/test(ing)?/) }
it { should have_sent_email.matching_body(/h(a|e)llo/) }
# Can chain together modifiers
# Note that apart from recipients, repeating a modifier overwrites old value.
it { should have_sent_email.from('[email protected]').to('[email protected]').matching_body(/hell/)
# test for attachments
# ... by specific attachment

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it { should_have_sent_email.with_attachments(my_attachment) }
# ... or any attachment
it { should_have_sent_email.with_attachments(any_attachment) }
# ... by array of attachments
it { should_have_sent_email.with_attachments([my_attachment1, my_attachment2]) } #note that order is important
#... by presence
it { should_have_sent_email.with_any_attachments }
#... or by absence
it { should_have_sent_email.with_no_attachments }
end

Core Extensions
The mail gem adds several constants and methods to Ruby's core objects (similar to the activesupport gem from the
Rails project). For example:
NilClass::blank?
NilClass::to_crlf
NilClass::to_lf
Object::blank?
String::to_crlf
String::to_lf
String::blank?
...etc...

For all the details, check out lib/mail/core_extensions/.

Excerpts from TREC Spam Corpus 2005

The spec fixture files in spec/fixtures/emails/from_trec_2005 are from the 2005 TREC Public Spam Corpus. They
remain copyrighted under the terms of that project and license agreement. They are used in this project to verify and
describe the development of this email parser implementation.
http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~gvcormac/treccorpus/
They are used as allowed by 'Permitted Uses, Clause 3':
"Small excerpts of the information may be displayed to others
or published in a scientific or technical context, solely for
the purpose of describing the research and development and
related issues."
-- http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~gvcormac/treccorpus/

License
(The MIT License)
Copyright (c) 20092016 Mikel Lindsaar
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated
documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons
to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the
Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT
NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM,
DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

2016 GitHub, Inc. Terms Privacy Security Status Help

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