Module Netsendmail

module Netsendmail: sig .. end

Functions to compose and send electronic mails

Contents

The tutorial has been moved to Netsendmail_tut.

Composing Messages

The core function is Netsendmail.compose generating a MIME mail. The mail can be sent with Netsendmail.sendmail, written to an object channel with Netmime.write_mime_message, or postprocessed by a user function.

The call to compose can be as easy as

 compose ~from_addr:("me", "me@domain.net") 
            ~to_addr:("you", "you@domain.com")
            ~subject:"I have a message for you"
            "Hello, this is my message!\n"

This call generates the message as Netmime.complex_mime_message, and can be directly sent with Netsendmail.sendmail.

The compose function is the simplified interface; alternatively one can also generate the mail by calling Netsendmail.wrap_mail, Netsendmail.wrap_parts, and Netsendmail.wrap_attachment, getting more fine-grained control of certain options.

val compose : ?in_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?out_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?from_addr:string * string ->
       ?cc_addrs:(string * string) list ->
       ?bcc_addrs:(string * string) list ->
       ?content_type:string * (string * Mimestring.s_param) list ->
       ?container_type:string * (string * Mimestring.s_param) list ->
       ?attachments:Netmime.complex_mime_message list ->
       to_addrs:(string * string) list ->
       subject:string -> string -> Netmime.complex_mime_message

Composes a mail message with a main text, and optionally a number of attachments.

The addresses from_addr, to_addrs, cc_addrs, and bcc_addrs are passed as pairs (human_readable,formal) where human_readable is an arbitrary printable string identifying the sender/receiver, and where formal is the RFC-822 mailbox specification. An example is ("Stolpmann, Gerd", "gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de").

The subject can be any text.

The anonymous string argument is the main text of the mail.

The resulting message is always a correct MIME message.

in_charset : All passed texts (except the formal addresses) must be encoded in in_charset. Default: `Enc_iso88591. As another exception, setting content_type explicitly prevents the main text from being converted, and in_charset does not have a meaning for the main text.

out_charset : The encoded words in the generated header fields, if necessary, and the main text are encoded in out_charset. Default: `Enc_iso88591. It is required that out_charset is ASCII-compatible. As a special rule, setting content_type explicitly prevents the main text from being converted to out_charset.

content_type : The content type of the main text. The list is the list of parameters attached to the type, e.g. ("text/plain", ["charset", mk_param "ISO-8859-1"]) (see Mimestring.mk_param). When this argument is set, the main text is no longer converted to out_charset. By default, when this argument is missing, the main text is converted from in_charset to out_charset, and the content type becomes "text/plain; charset=<out_charset>".

container_type : The content type of the container wrapping the main text and the attachment into one entity (only used if attachments are present). This defaults to ("multipart/mixed", []). This must be either a "multipart" or "message" type.

attachments : An optional list of attachments. Should be generated with wrap_attachment.

Character Set Conversion

The impact of in_charset and out_charset on the generated mail is not very obvious. The charset arguments may have an effect on the mail header and the mail body.

The mail header can only be composed of ASCII characters (7 bit). To circumvent this restriction the MIME standard specifies a special format, the so-called encoded words. These may only be used in some places, and compose knows where: In the subject, and the non-formal part of mail addresses. The out_charset is the character set used in the generated mail. The in_charset is the character set the strings are encoded you pass to compose. It is a good idea to have in_charset = out_charset, or at least choose out_charset as a superset of in_charset, because this ensures that the character set conversion succeeds.

If the mail header does not make use of the additional non-ASCII characters, the encoded words will be avoided.

The mail body is only subject of character set conversion if the content_type is not passed to compose. In this case, the function sets it to text/plain, and converts the message from in_charset to out_charset.

Adding Attachments

To generate the attachments, call Netsendmail.wrap_attachment, e.g.

 compose ...
      ~attachments:[ wrap_attachment  
                       ~content_type:("application/octet-stream", [])
                       (new Netmime.file_mime_body "file.tar.gz") ]

There are a number of kinds of attaching files, identified by container_type. The default is multipart/mixed, meaning that the parts of the mail are mixed messages and files. One can give a hint whether to display the parts directly in the mailer program (so-called inline attachments), or whether to suggest that the file is saved to disk ("real" attachments). This hint is contained in the Content-disposition header, see wrap_attachment how to set it.

For a discusion of the other container_types see the Netsendmail.tutorial at the end of this document.

val wrap_attachment : ?in_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?out_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?content_id:string ->
       ?content_description:string ->
       ?content_location:string ->
       ?content_disposition:string * (string * Mimestring.s_param) list ->
       content_type:string * (string * Mimestring.s_param) list ->
       Netmime.mime_body -> Netmime.complex_mime_message

Generates a header for the mime_body. The returned value is intended to be used as input for the attachments argument of the compose function:

 compose ...
    ~attachments:[ wrap_attachment
                      ~content_type:("audio/wav", [])
                      (new file_mime_body "music.wav") ]

The header contains at least the Content-type and the Content-transfer-encoding fields. The latter is currently always "base64", but it is possible that the function is changed in the future to also generate "quoted-printable" when applicable.

in_charset : The encoding of the content_description argument. Default: `Enc_iso88591.

out_charset : The encoding of the generated Content-Description header. Default: `Enc_iso88591.

content_id : Optionally sets the Content-ID header field. The passed string is the ID value without the embracing angle brackets. The Content-ID can be used to refer to the attachment from other parts of the mail, e.g. in multipart/related mails HTML documents can include hyperlinks to attachments using the URL syntax cid:ID where ID is the ID value.

content_description : The Content-Description header

content_location : The Content-Location header. This must be a valid URL, only composed of 7 bit characters, and with escaped unsafe characters

content_disposition : Optionally sets the Content-disposition header. Frequent values are

("inline", []) : Indicates that the attachment is displayed together with the main text
("attachment", ["filename", Mimestring.mk_param fn]) : Indicates that the attachment should be stored onto the disk. The parameter fn is the suggested file name. Note that fn should only consist of ASCII characters unless the charset argument of mk_param is set to a different character encoding.

content_type : Specifies the content type with main type and list of parameters. Example: ("text/plain", ["charset", Mimestring.mk_param "ISO-8859-1" ]) (see Mimestring.mk_param)

val wrap_mail : ?in_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?out_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?from_addr:string * string ->
       ?cc_addrs:(string * string) list ->
       ?bcc_addrs:(string * string) list ->
       to_addrs:(string * string) list ->
       subject:string ->
       Netmime.complex_mime_message -> Netmime.complex_mime_message

Sets the mail-related header fields in the input message, and returns a message ready for delivery. Transfer- and delivery-related header fields are removed from the message first, and the new fields are set to the values passed to this function.

The arguments are like in Netsendmail.compose.

The input message should have at least a Content-type header, but this is not enforced.

Use this function as an alternative to Netsendmail.compose, if the message is already available as complex_mime_message, e.g. to re-send a parsed mail message to a new destination.

Note: Resending Messages

Note that mails generated by wrap_mail always appear as new mails, not as forwarded or replied mails. In order to do the latter a different way of processing the message is needed.

val wrap_parts : ?in_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?out_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?content_type:string * (string * Mimestring.s_param) list ->
       ?content_id:string ->
       ?content_description:string ->
       ?content_location:string ->
       ?content_disposition:string * (string * Mimestring.s_param) list ->
       Netmime.complex_mime_message list -> Netmime.complex_mime_message

Generates an intermediate container for multipart attachments. Use this if you want to bundle a set of attachments as a single attachment.

in_charset : The encoding of the content_description argument. Default: `Enc_iso88591.

out_charset : The encoding of the generated Content-Description header. Default: `Enc_iso88591.

content_type : The Content-Type header. Default: multipart/mixed

content_id : The Content-ID header, without the angle brackets

content_description : The Content-Description header

content_location : The Content-Location header. This must be a valid URL, only composed of 7 bit characters, and with escaped unsafe characters

content_disposition : The Content-Disposition header

Low-level

val create_address_list_tokens : ?in_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?out_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       (string * string) list -> Mimestring.s_token list

Returns the list of s_tokens representing email addresses as structured value. The addresses are passed as list of pairs (human_readable, formal) as in the compose function above. The returned structured field value can be formatted and filled into a mail header. For example, to set the "To" header to "Stolpmann, Gerd" <gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de> use

 let sval = create_address_list_tokens ["Stolpmann, Gerd",
                                        "gerd@gerd-stolpmann.de"] in
 header # update_field "to" (format_field_value "to" sval)

This ensures that the field is correctly quoted, that appropriate encodings are applied and that long values are folded into several lines.

in_charset : The character encoding used for human_readable. Defaults to `Enc_iso88591.

out_charset : The character encoding used in the generated encoded word. This encoding must be ASCII-compatible. Defaults to `Enc_iso88591.

val create_text_tokens : ?in_charset:Netconversion.encoding ->
       ?out_charset:Netconversion.encoding -> string -> Mimestring.s_token list

Returns the list of s_tokens representing an informal text as structured value. The text is passed as simple string. The returned structured field value can be formatted and filled into a mail header. For example, to set the "Subject" header to "I have to say something", use

 let sval = create_text_tokens "I have to say something" in
 header # update_field "subject" (format_field_value "subject" sval)

This ensures that the field is correctly quoted, that appropriate encodings are applied and that long values are folded into several lines.

in_charset : The character encoding used for the input string. Defaults to `Enc_iso88591.

out_charset : The character encoding used in the generated encoded words. This encoding must be ASCII-compatible. Defaults to `Enc_iso88591.

val format_field_value : string -> Mimestring.s_token list -> string

To put sval, an s_token list, into the header field name, call

header # update_field name (format_field_value name sval)

The field value is folded into several lines, if necessary.

Sending Messages

val sendmail : ?mailer:string -> ?crlf:bool -> Netmime.complex_mime_message -> unit

Sends the passed message. The mailer program must be sendmail-compatible (this can be assumed on all Unix systems, even if a non-sendmail mailer is installed).

The mailer program is the command passed as mailer, which is by default a reasonable compile-time setting.

With crlf one can determine the EOL convention for the message piped to the mailer program: If crlf, CR/LF is used, if not crlf, only LF is used. The default is false for Unix systems.

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