There's an ever-increasing number of modules for sending mail with Perl. With all of the choices that CPAN offers, how does one choose which module best suits their needs? It can be hard to navigate this growing sea of choice, but I spent half a year working with rjbs, whom many of you know as one of Perl's premiere email hackers. I learned a lot from him, and I want to share that knowledge with you to help make your email code suck less. In this talk, I'll provide a small collection of modules for sending email with Perl, with example code. You really only need to know a few to be productive for most tasks, and only a few more if you have unusual requirements or are an email power user.

1. Sending Email with Perl
Why does it hurt so much, daddy?
2011-10-09

2. About Me
✤ apeiron (IRC/CPAN)
✤ Chris Nehren if you insist on a meatspace name
✤ I like Perl and tabletop RPGs

3. Tools of the trade

4. Tools of the trade
✤ Mail::Box (though if you don’t mind complexity, it’s really solid)

5. Tools of the trade
✤ Mail::Box (though if you don’t mind complexity, it’s really solid)
✤ Email::Send

6. Tools of the trade
✤ Mail::Box (though if you don’t mind complexity, it’s really solid)
✤ Email::Send
✤ Email::Valid

7. Tools of the trade
✤ Mail::Box (though if you don’t mind complexity, it’s really solid)
✤ Email::Send
✤ Email::Valid
✤ Email::Address

8. Tools of the trade
✤ Mail::Box (though if you don’t mind complexity, it’s really solid)
✤ Email::Send
✤ Email::Valid
✤ Email::Address
✤ Email::MIME

9. Tools of the trade
✤ Mail::Box (though if you don’t mind complexity, it’s really solid)
✤ Email::Send
✤ Email::Valid
✤ Email::Address
✤ Email::MIME
✤ Email::Sender

10. Email::Valid

11. Email::Valid
✤ Simple email address validation

12. Email::Valid
✤ Simple email address validation
✤ One (class) method: address($address)

13. Email::Valid
✤ Simple email address validation
✤ One (class) method: address($address)
✤ Call method

14. Email::Valid
✤ Simple email address validation
✤ One (class) method: address($address)
✤ Call method
✤ Receive Bacon*
Bacon may or may not be imaginary. Consult your Perl vendor for details.

15. Email::Valid
✤ Simple email address validation
✤ One (class) method: address($address)
✤ Call method
✤ Receive Bacon*
✤ Also receive true/false value depending upon whether it’s valid
Bacon may or may not be imaginary. Consult your Perl vendor for details.

16. Email::Valid
✤ Simple email address validation
✤ One (class) method: address($address)
✤ Call method
✤ Receive Bacon*
✤ Also receive true/false value depending upon whether it’s valid
✤ There are actually lots of methods for inspecting the address, but
address is the one you’re likely to use the most.
Bacon may or may not be imaginary. Consult your Perl vendor for details.

17. Usage Example
#!env perl
use 5.014;
use strictures 1;
use Email::Valid;
say Email::Valid->address('foo') ? "valid" : "not";
say Email::Valid->address('foo@bar.com') ? "valid" : "not";
say Email::Valid->address('foo+baz@bar.com') ? "valid" : "not";
# yields this:
not
valid
valid

18. Email::Address

19. Email::Address
✤ Used for accessing different parts of an address

20. Email::Address
✤ Used for accessing different parts of an address
✤ Some mutators, but primarily accessors

21. Email::Address
✤ Used for accessing different parts of an address
✤ Some mutators, but primarily accessors
✤ Two constructors: parse and new

22. Email::Address
✤ Used for accessing different parts of an address
✤ Some mutators, but primarily accessors
✤ Two constructors: parse and new
✤ parse returns a list of addresses

23. Email::Address
✤ Used for accessing different parts of an address
✤ Some mutators, but primarily accessors
✤ Two constructors: parse and new
✤ parse returns a list of addresses
✤ new accepts a phrase, address, and comment*
Actually it accepts a fourth argument, an original string. But you probably should ignore it.

24. Email::Address Methods

25. Email::Address Methods
✤ address
✤ get/set actual address, e.g. foo@bar.com

26. Email::Address Methods
✤ address
✤ get/set actual address, e.g. foo@bar.com
✤ host
✤ get/set the hostname of the address, e.g. bar.com

27. Email::Address Methods
✤ address
✤ get/set actual address, e.g. foo@bar.com
✤ host
✤ get/set the hostname of the address, e.g. bar.com
✤ user
✤ get/set the local part of the address, e.g. foo

28. Usage example
#!env perl
use 5.014;
use strictures 1;
use Email::Address;
my ($one, $two, $three) = Email::Address->parse(
'foo@bar.com, baz@quux.com, "hello" <me@example.com>'
);
say $three; # stringify overload
say $three->address; # raw address, no phrase/comment.
say $three->host;
say $three->user;
# yields:
"hello" <me@example.com>
example.com
me
me@example.com

29. Email::MIME -- Why?

30. Email::MIME -- Why?
✤ It’s simple

31. Email::MIME -- Why?
✤ It’s simple
✤ It’s easy

32. Email::MIME -- Why?
✤ It’s simple
✤ It’s easy
✤ It works

33. Email::MIME -- Why?
✤ It’s simple
✤ It’s easy
✤ It works
✤ ... but really it just sucks the least.

34. So how do you
use it?
This won’t hurt a bit.

35. Methods of Email::MIME

36. Methods of Email::MIME
✤ body_str_set($unicode)
✤ sets body to given Unicode characters. Warning: clears other parts!

37. Methods of Email::MIME
✤ body_str_set($unicode)
✤ sets body to given Unicode characters. Warning: clears other parts!
✤ header_str_set($header, $unicode)
✤ like body_str_set, but for headers.

38. Methods of Email::MIME
✤ body_str_set($unicode)
✤ sets body to given Unicode characters. Warning: clears other parts!
✤ header_str_set($header, $unicode)
✤ like body_str_set, but for headers.
✤ parts_set(@email_mime_objects)
✤ replaces the parts of the object with the given parts

39. Methods of Email::MIME
✤ body_str_set($unicode)
✤ sets body to given Unicode characters. Warning: clears other parts!
✤ header_str_set($header, $unicode)
✤ like body_str_set, but for headers.
✤ parts_set(@email_mime_objects)
✤ replaces the parts of the object with the given parts
✤ parts_add(@more_parts)
✤ appends, not sets

40. Methods of Email::MIME
✤ body_str_set($unicode)
✤ sets body to given Unicode characters. Warning: clears other parts!
✤ header_str_set($header, $unicode)
✤ like body_str_set, but for headers.
✤ parts_set(@email_mime_objects)
✤ replaces the parts of the object with the given parts
✤ parts_add(@more_parts)
✤ appends, not sets
✤ walk_parts($coderef)
✤ give it a callback, gets called with Email::MIME objects

41. From the new perlfaq9:
#!env perl
use strictures 1;
use Email::MIME;
my $message = Email::MIME->create(
header_str => [
From => 'you@example.com',
To => 'friend@example.com',
Subject => 'Happy birthday!',
],
body => 'Happy birthday to you!',
);

42. If we call
$message->as_string,
From: you@example.com
To: friend@example.com
Subject: Happy birthday!
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 2011 16:56:41 -0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Happy birthday to you!

43. Email::Sender

44. Email::Sender
✤ Moose-based interface to different ways of sending email messages

45. Email::Sender
✤ Moose-based interface to different ways of sending email messages
✤ Different transports for different purposes

46. Email::Sender
✤ Moose-based interface to different ways of sending email messages
✤ Different transports for different purposes
✤ Suggested interface (for now) is Email::Sender::Simple

47. Email::Sender
✤ Moose-based interface to different ways of sending email messages
✤ Different transports for different purposes
✤ Suggested interface (for now) is Email::Sender::Simple
✤ This exposes one function: sendmail().

48. Email::Sender
✤ Moose-based interface to different ways of sending email messages
✤ Different transports for different purposes
✤ Suggested interface (for now) is Email::Sender::Simple
✤ This exposes one function: sendmail().
✤ sendmail() accepts Email::MIME objects, so we’re in business.

49. Email::Sender Transport Gazetteer

50. Email::Sender Transport Gazetteer
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::Sendmail
✤ tries to use /usr/sbin/sendmail or the like; you probably need to
smarthost / relay

51. Email::Sender Transport Gazetteer
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::Sendmail
✤ tries to use /usr/sbin/sendmail or the like; you probably need to
smarthost / relay
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP
✤ Send mail through an SMTP server, optionally with SASL
authentication.

52. Email::Sender Transport Gazetteer
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::Sendmail
✤ tries to use /usr/sbin/sendmail or the like; you probably need to
smarthost / relay
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP
✤ Send mail through an SMTP server, optionally with SASL
authentication.
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP::TLS
✤ Like the above, but uses TLS. If you use Gmail, you’ll need this.

53. Email::Sender Transport Gazetteer
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::Sendmail
✤ tries to use /usr/sbin/sendmail or the like; you probably need to
smarthost / relay
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP
✤ Send mail through an SMTP server, optionally with SASL
authentication.
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP::TLS
✤ Like the above, but uses TLS. If you use Gmail, you’ll need this.
✤ Email::Sender::Transport::Test
✤ Delivers to an in-memory structure for analysis

54. Example Usages
sendmail($message); # default transport
sendmail(
$message,
{
transport => Email::Sender::Transport::SMTP->new(
host => ‘mx.example.com’,
port => 25,
);
}
);

55. Bonus material: pmail(1) demo
When You Run Out Of Material, Demo A Very Flexible Program You Wrote