POP3Client(3)

NAME
Mail::POP3Client - Perl 5 module to talk to a POP3 (RFC1939) server

SYNOPSIS
  use Mail::POP3Client;
  $pop = new Mail::POP3Client( USER     => "me",
                               PASSWORD => "mypassword",
                               HOST     => "pop3.do.main" );
  for( $i = 1; $i <= $pop->Count(); $i++ ) {
    foreach( $pop->Head( $i ) ) {
      /^(From|Subject):\s+/i && print $_, "\n";
    }
  }
  $pop->Close();
  # OR
  $pop2 = new Mail::POP3Client( HOST  => "pop3.otherdo.main" );
  $pop2->User( "somebody" );
  $pop2->Pass( "doublesecret" );
  $pop2->Connect() || die $pop2->Message();
  $pop2->Close();

DESCRIPTION
This module implements an Object-Oriented interface to a POP3 server. It implements RFC1939 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1939.html)

EXAMPLES
Here is a simple example to list out the From: and Subject: headers in your remote mailbox:

  #!/usr/local/bin/perl

  use Mail::POP3Client;

  $pop = new Mail::POP3Client( USER     => "me",
                               PASSWORD => "mypassword",
                               HOST     => "pop3.do.main" );
  for ($i = 1; $i <= $pop->Count(); $i++) {
    foreach ( $pop->Head( $i ) ) {
      /^(From|Subject):\s+/i and print $_, "\n";
    }
    print "\n";
  }

CONSTRUCTORS
Old style (deprecated):
   new Mail::POP3Client( USER, PASSWORD [, HOST, PORT, DEBUG, AUTH_MODE] );

New style (shown with defaults):
   new Mail::POP3Client( USER => "",
                        PASSWORD => "",
                        HOST => "pop3",
                        PORT => 110,
                        AUTH_MODE => 'BEST',
                        DEBUG => 0,
                        TIMEOUT => 60,
                        LOCALADDR => 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx[:xx]',
                       );

* USER is the userID of the account on the POP server
* PASSWORD is the cleartext password for the userID
* HOST is the POP server name or IP address (default = 'pop3')
* PORT is the POP server port (default = 110)
* DEBUG - any non-null, non-zero value turns on debugging (default = 0)
* AUTH_MODE - pass 'APOP' to force APOP (MD5) authorization. (default is 'BEST')
* TIMEOUT - set a timeout value for socket operations (default = 60)
* LOCALADDR - allow selecting a local inet address to use

METHODS
These commands are intended to make writing a POP3 client easier. They do not necessarily map directly to POP3 commands defined in RFC1081 or RFC1939, although all commands should be supported. Some commands return multiple lines as an array in an array context.

new( USER => 'user', PASSWORD => 'password', HOST => 'host', PORT => 110, DEBUG => 0, AUTH_MODE => 'BEST', TIMEOUT => 60 )
    Construct a new POP3 connection with this. You should use the hash-style constructor. The old positional constructor is deprecated and will be removed in a future release. It is strongly recommended that you convert your code to the new version.

    You should give it at least 2 arguments: USER and PASSWORD. The default HOST is 'pop3' which may or may not work for you. You can specify a different PORT (be careful here).

    new will attempt to Connect to and Login to the POP3 server if you supply a USER and PASSWORD. If you do not supply them in the constructor, you will need to call Connect yourself.

    The valid values for AUTH_MODE are 'BEST', 'PASS' and 'APOP'. BEST says to try APOP if the server appears to support it and it can be used to successfully log on, otherwise revert to PASS. APOP implies that an MD5 checksum will be used instead of sending your password in cleartext. However, if the server does not claim to support APOP, the cleartext method will be used. Be careful. There are a few servers that will send a timestamp in the banner greeting, but APOP will not work with them (for instance if the server does not know your password in cleartext). If you think your authentication information is correct, run in DEBUG mode and look for errors regarding authorization. If so, then you may have to use 'PASS' for that server.

    If you enable debugging with DEBUG => 1, socket traffic will be echoed to STDERR.

    Another warning, it's impossible to differentiate between a timeout and a failure.

Head( MESSAGE_NUMBER [, PREVIEW_LINES ] )
    Get the headers of the specified message, either as an array or as a string, depending on context.

    You can also specify a number of preview lines which will be returned with the headers. This may not be supported by all POP3 server implementations as it is marked as optional in the RFC. Submitted by Dennis Moroney <dennis@hub.iwl.net>.

Body( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
    Get the body of the specified message, either as an array of lines or as a string, depending on context.

BodyToFile( FILE_HANDLE, MESSAGE_NUMBER )
    Get the body of the specified message and write it to the given file handle. my $fh = new IO::Handle(); $fh->fdopen( fileno( STDOUT ), "w" ); $pop->BodyToFile( $fh, 1 );

    Does no stripping of NL or CR.

HeadAndBody( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
    Get the head and body of the specified message, either as an array of lines or as a string, depending on context.

    Example
        foreach ( $pop->HeadAndBody( 1 ) )
           print $_, "\n";

        prints out the complete text of message 1.

HeadAndBodyToFile( FILE_HANDLE, MESSAGE_NUMBER )
    Get the head and body of the specified message and write it to the given file handle. my $fh = new IO::Handle(); $fh->fdopen( fileno( STDOUT ), "w" ); $pop->HeadAndBodyToFile( $fh, 1 );

    Does no stripping of NL or CR.

Retrieve( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
    Same as HeadAndBody.

RetrieveToFile( FILE_HANDLE, MESSAGE_NUMBER )
    Same as HeadAndBodyToFile.

Delete( MESSAGE_NUMBER )
    Mark the specified message number as DELETED. Becomes effective upon QUIT. Can be reset with a Reset message.

Connect
    Start the connection to the POP3 server. You can pass in the host and port.

Close
    Close the connection gracefully. POP3 says this will perform any pending deletes on the server.

Alive
    Return true or false on whether the connection is active.

Socket
    Return the file descriptor for the socket.

Size
    Set/Return the size of the remote mailbox. Set by POPStat.

Count
    Set/Return the number of remote messages. Set during Login.

Message
    The last status message received from the server or a message describing any problem encountered.

State
    The internal state of the connection: DEAD, AUTHORIZATION, TRANSACTION.

POPStat
    Return the results of a POP3 STAT command. Sets the size of the mailbox.

List([message_number])
    Returns the size of the given message number when called with an argument using the following format:

       <message_number> <size_in_bytes>

    If message_number is omitted, List behaves the same as ListArray, returning an indexed array of the sizes of each message in the same format.

    You can parse the size in bytes using split:
     ($msgnum, $size) = split ' ', $pop -> List( n )

ListArray
    Return a list of sizes of each message. This returns an indexed array, with each message number as an index (starting from 1) and the value as the next entry on the line. Beware that some servers send additional info for each message for the list command. That info may be lost.

Uidl( [MESSAGE_NUMBER] )
    Return the unique ID for the given message (or all of them). Returns an indexed array with an entry for each valid message number. Indexing begins at 1 to coincide with the server's indexing.

Last
    Return the number of the last message, retrieved from the server.

Reset
    Tell the server to unmark any message marked for deletion.

User( [USER_NAME] )
    Set/Return the current user name.

Pass( [PASSWORD] )
    Set/Return the current user name.

Login
    Attempt to login to the server connection.

Host( [HOSTNAME] )
    Set/Return the current host.

Port( [PORT_NUMBER] )
    Set/Return the current port number.

AUTHOR
Sean Dowd <pop3client@dowds.net>

CREDITS
Based loosely on News::NNTPClient by Rodger Anderson <rodger@boi.hp.com>.

SEE ALSO
perl(1).