Email::Find(3pm)					User Contributed Perl Documentation					  Email::Find(3pm)

NAME

       Email::Find - Find RFC 822 email addresses in plain text

SYNOPSIS

	 use Email::Find;

	 # new object oriented interface
	 my $finder = Email::Find->new(&callback);
	 my $num_found - $finder->find($text);

	 # good old functional style
	 $num_found = find_emails($text, &callback);

DESCRIPTION

       Email::Find is a module for finding a subset of RFC 822 email addresses in arbitrary text (see "CAVEATS").  The addresses it finds are not
       guaranteed to exist or even actually be email addresses at all (see "CAVEATS"), but they will be valid RFC 822 syntax.

       Email::Find will perform some heuristics to avoid some of the more obvious red herrings and false addresses, but there's only so much which
       can be done without a human.

METHODS

       new
	     $finder = Email::Find->new(&callback);

	   Constructs new Email::Find object. Specified callback will be called with each email as they're found.

       find
	     $num_emails_found = $finder->find($text);

	   Finds email addresses in the text and executes callback registered.

	   The callback is given two arguments.  The first is a Mail::Address object representing the address found.  The second is the actual
	   original email as found in the text.  Whatever the callback returns will replace the original text.

FUNCTIONS

       For backward compatibility, Email::Find exports one function, find_emails(). It works very similar to URI::Find's find_uris().

EXAMPLES

	 use Email::Find;

	 # Simply print out all the addresses found leaving the text undisturbed.
	 my $finder = Email::Find->new(sub {
					   my($email, $orig_email) = @_;
					   print "Found ".$email->format."
";
					   return $orig_email;
				       });
	 $finder->find($text);

	 # For each email found, ping its host to see if its alive.
	 require Net::Ping;
	 $ping = Net::Ping->new;
	 my %Pinged = ();
	 my $finder = Email::Find->new(sub {
					   my($email, $orig_email) = @_;
					   my $host = $email->host;
					   next if exists $Pinged{$host};
					   $Pinged{$host} = $ping->ping($host);
				       });

	 $finder->find($text);

	 while( my($host, $up) = each %Pinged ) {
	     print "$host is ". $up ? 'up' : 'down' ."
";
	 }

	 # Count how many addresses are found.
	 my $finder = Email::Find->new(sub { $_[1] });
	 print "Found ", $finder->find($text), " addresses
";

	 # Wrap each address in an HTML mailto link.
	 my $finder = Email::Find->new(
	     sub {
		 my($email, $orig_email) = @_;
		 my($address) = $email->format;
		 return qq|<a href="mailto:$address">$orig_email</a>|;
	     },
	 );
	 $finder->find($text);

SUBCLASSING

       If you want to change the way this module works in finding email address, you can do it by making your subclass of Email::Find, which over-
       rides "addr_regex" and "do_validate" method.

       For example, the following class can additionally find email addresses with dot before at mark. This is illegal in RFC822, see
       Email::Valid::Loose for details.

	 package Email::Find::Loose;
	 use base qw(Email::Find);
	 use Email::Valid::Loose;

	 # should return regex, which Email::Find will use in finding
	 # strings which are "thought to be" email addresses
	 sub addr_regex {
	     return $Email::Valid::Loose::Addr_spec_re;
	 }

	 # should validate $addr is a valid email or not.
	 # if so, return the address as a string.
	 # else, return undef
	 sub do_validate {
	     my($self, $addr) = @_;
	     return Email::Valid::Loose->address($addr);
	 }

       Let's see another example, which validates if the address is an existent one or not, with Mail::CheckUser module.

	 package Email::Find::Existent;
	 use base qw(Email::Find);
	 use Mail::CheckUser qw(check_email);

	 sub do_validate {
	     my($self, $addr) = @_;
	     return check_email($addr) ? $addr : undef;
	 }

CAVEATS

	   Why a subset of RFC 822?
	       I say that this module finds a subset of RFC 822 because if I attempted to look for all possible valid RFC 822 addresses I'd wind
	       up practically matching the entire block of text!  The complete specification is so wide open that its difficult to construct
	       soemthing that's not an RFC 822 address.

	       To keep myself sane, I look for the 'address spec' or 'global address' part of an RFC 822 address.  This is the part which most
	       people consider to be an email address (the 'foo@bar.com' part) and it is also the part which contains the information necessary
	       for delivery.

	   Why are some of the matches not email addresses?
	       Alas, many things which aren't email addresses look like email addresses and parse just fine as them.  The biggest headache is
	       email and usenet and email message IDs.	I do my best to avoid them, but there's only so much cleverness you can pack into one
	       library.

AUTHORS

       Copyright 2000, 2001 Michael G Schwern <schwern@pobox.com>.  All rights reserved.

       Current maintainer is Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa@bulknews.net>.

THANKS

       Schwern thanks to Jeremy Howard for his patch to make it work under 5.005.

LICENSE

       This module is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

       The author STRONGLY SUGGESTS that this module not be used for the purposes of sending unsolicited email (ie. spamming) in any way, shape or
       form or for the purposes of generating lists for commercial sale.

       If you use this module for spamming I reserve the right to make fun of you.

SEE ALSO

       Email::Valid, RFC 822, URI::Find, Apache::AntiSpam, Email::Valid::Loose

perl v5.8.8							    2006-03-18							  Email::Find(3pm)