Net::SMTP::TLS(3) An SMTP client supporting TLS and AUTH

VERSION

Version 0.12

SYNOPSIS


use Net::SMTP::TLS;
my $mailer = new Net::SMTP::TLS(
'your.mail.host',
Hello => 'some.host.name',
Port => 25, #redundant
User => 'emailguy',
Password=> 's3cr3t');
$mailer->mail('[email protected]');
$mailer->to('[email protected]');
$mailer->data;
$mailer->datasend("Sent thru TLS!");
$mailer->dataend;
$mailer->quit;

DESCRIPTION

Net::SMTP::TLS is a TLS and AUTH capable SMTP client which offers an interface that users will find familiar from Net::SMTP. Net::SMTP::TLS implements a subset of the methods provided by that module, but certainly not (yet) a complete mirror image of that API.

The methods supported by Net::SMTP::TLS are used in the above example. Though self explanatory for the most part, please see the perldoc for Net::SMTP if you are unclear.

The differences in the methods provided are as follows:

The mail method does not take the options list taken by Net::SMTP

The to method also does not take options, and is the only method available to set the recipient (unlike the many synonyms provided by Net::SMTP).

The constructor takes a limited number of Net::SMTP's parameters. The constructor for Net::SMTP::TLS takes the following (in addition to the hostname of the mail server, which must be the first parameter and is not explicitly named):

NoTLS - In the unlikely event that you need to use this class to perform non-TLS SMTP (you ought to be using Net::SMTP itself for that...), this will turn off TLS when supplied with a true value. This will most often cause an error related to authentication when used on a server that requires TLS

Hello - hostname used in the EHLO command

Port - port to connect to the SMTP service (defaults to 25)

Timeout - Timeout for inital socket connection (defaults to 5, passed directly to IO::Socket::INET)

User - username for SMTP AUTH

Password - password for SMTP AUTH

TLS and AUTHentication

During construction of an Net::SMTP::TLS instance, the full login process will occur. This involves first sending EHLO to the server, then initiating a TLS session through STARTTLS. Once this is complete, the module will attempt to login using the credentials supplied by the constructor, if such credentials have been supplied.

The AUTH method will depend on the features returned by the server after the EHLO command. Based on that, CRAM-MD5 will be used if available, followed by LOGIN, followed by PLAIN. Please note that LOGIN is the only method of authentication that has been tested. CRAM-MD5 and PLAIN login functionality was taken directly from the script mentioned in the acknowledgements section, however, I have not tested them personally.

ERROR HANDLING

This module will croak in the event of an SMTP error. Should you wish to handle this gracefully in your application, you may wrap your mail transmission in an eval {} block and check $@ afterward.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This code was blatantly plagiarized from Michal Ludvig's smtp-client.pl script. See <http://www.logix.cz/michal/devel/smtp> for his excellent work.

AUTHOR

Alexander Christian Westholm, awestholm at verizon dawt net

Improvements courtesy of Tomek Zielinski