CONTENTS

NAME

Email::MIME::Kit - build messages from templates

VERSION

version 3.000008

SYNOPSIS

use Email::MIME::Kit;

my $kit = Email::MIME::Kit->new({ source => 'mkits/sample.mkit' });

my $email = $kit->assemble({
  account           => $new_signup,
  verification_code => $token,
  ... and any other template vars ...
});

$transport->send($email, { ... });

DESCRIPTION

Email::MIME::Kit is a templating system for email messages. Instead of trying to be yet another templating system for chunks of text, it makes it easy to build complete email messages.

It handles the construction of multipart messages, text and HTML alternatives, attachments, interpart linking, string encoding, and parameter validation.

Although nearly every part of Email::MIME::Kit is a replaceable component, the stock configuration is probably enough for most use. A message kit will be stored as a directory that might look like this:

sample.mkit/
  manifest.json
  body.txt
  body.html
  logo.jpg

The manifest file tells Email::MIME::Kit how to put it all together, and might look something like this:

{
  "renderer": "TT",
  "header": [
    { "From": "WY Corp <noreplies@wy.example.com>" },
    { "Subject": "Welcome aboard, [% recruit.name %]!" }
  ],
  "alternatives": [
    { "type": "text/plain", "path": "body.txt" },
    {
      "type": "text/html",
      "path": "body.html",
      "container_type": "multipart/related",
      "attachments": [ { "type": "image/jpeg", "path": "logo.jpg" } ]
    }
  ]
}

Inline images may be accessed with the function cid_for, for example to include the above logo.jpg:

<img style="margin: 0 auto" src="cid:[% cid_for("logo.jpg") %]">

Please note: the assembly of HTML documents as multipart/related bodies may be simplified with an alternate assembler in the future.

The above manifest would build a multipart alternative message. GUI mail clients would see a rendered HTML document with the logo graphic visible from the attachment. Text mail clients would see the plaintext.

Both the HTML and text parts would be rendered using the named renderer, which here is Template-Toolkit.

The message would be assembled and returned as an Email::MIME object, just as easily as suggested in the "SYNOPSIS" above.

PERL VERSION

This library should run on perls released even a long time ago. It should work on any version of perl released in the last five years.

Although it may work on older versions of perl, no guarantee is made that the minimum required version will not be increased. The version may be increased for any reason, and there is no promise that patches will be accepted to lower the minimum required perl.

ENCODING ISSUES

In general, "it should all just work" ... starting in version v3.

Email::MIME::Kit assumes that any file read for the purpose of becoming a text/*-type part is encoded in UTF-8. It will decode them and work with their contents as text strings. Renderers will be passed text strings to render, and so on. This, further, means that strings passed to the assemble method for use in rendering should also be text strings.

In older versions of Email::MIME::Kit, files read from disk were read in raw mode and then handled as octet strings. Meanwhile, the manifest's contents (and, thus, any templates stored as strings in the manifest) were decoded into text strings. This could lead to serious problems. For example: the manifest.json file might contain:

"header": [
  { "Subject": "Message for [% customer_name %]" },
  ...
]

...while a template on disk might contain:

Dear [% customer_name %],
...

If the customer's name isn't ASCII, there was no right way to pass it in. The template on disk would expect UTF-8, but the template in the manifest would expect Unicode text. Users prior to v3 may have taken strange steps to get around this problem, understanding that some templates were treated differently than others. This means that some review of kits is in order when upgrading from earlier versions of Email::MIME::Kit.

AUTHOR

This code was written in 2009 by Ricardo SIGNES. It was based on a previous implementation by Hans Dieter Pearcey written in 2006.

The development of this code was sponsored by Pobox.com. Thanks, Pobox!

AUTHOR

Ricardo Signes <cpan@semiotic.systems>

CONTRIBUTORS

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2023 by Ricardo Signes.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.