How can I save email to a file with Perl?

Question

Hello,

I learning Perl and I want to create a simple application that gets all my emails and save they to a file, but how I can do this? Thanks.

Answer 1

POP3 example in Perl

Answer 2

The answer to almost any such question is "Find the right module on CPAN Search".

Most modules come with examples in the documentation and tests.

Good luck, :)

Answer 3

I used to use the following script to filter SpamAssassin flagged email before switching ISPs:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

$| = 1;

use constant SEVERITY => 5;

use Mail::POP3Client;
use Term::ReadKey;

my $user = shift;

my $pop = Mail::POP3Client->new(
    HOST => '127.0.0.1', 
    PORT => 9999
);

my $pass = prompt_password();
print "\n";

$pop->User($user);
$pop->Pass($pass);
$pop->Connect or die $pop->Message;

my $count = $pop->Count;

$count >= 0 or die "Failed to get message count.\n";
$count >  0 or die "No messages in mailbox.\n";

my @to_delete;

print "Scanning messages:  ";

my $to_delete = 0;
for my $msg_num (1 .. $count) {
    my @headers = $pop->Head($msg_num);

    for my $h (@headers) {
        if($h =~ /^X-Spam-Level: (\*+)/) {
            if(SEVERITY <= length $1) {
                $to_delete += 1;
                $pop->Delete($msg_num);
                print "\b*>";
            } else {
                print "\b->";
            }
        }
    }
}

print "\b ... done\n";

use Lingua::EN::Inflect qw( PL );

if( $to_delete ) {
    printf "%d %s will be deleted. Commit: [Y/N]?\n",
        $to_delete, PL('message', $to_delete);
    $pop->Reset unless yes();
}

$pop->Close;

print "OK\n";

sub yes {
    while(my $r = <STDIN>) {
        $r = lc substr $r, 0, 1;
        return 1 if $r eq 'y';
        next unless $r eq 'n';
        last;
    }
    0;
}

sub prompt_password {
    print 'Password: ';
    ReadMode 2;
    my $pass = ReadLine 0;
    ReadMode 0;
    chomp $pass;
    return $pass;
}

It is trivial to change this so it saves messages. See Mail::POP3Client.