Ruby: how to parse e-mail mime from the stdin

Question

Anyone know how I can parse the E-mail MIME from Ruby when the input is from STDIN? I have found a gem called "mail" which looks really nice but so far as I can see it's able to read a mail only from the file:

require 'mail'
mail = Mail.read('/path/to/message.eml')

This is how I'm testing it:

# First one is from stdin:
require 'mail'
mail = Mail.new($stdin.readlines)
p mail.from
p mail.to

returns: nil nil

# This one is from the file:
mail2 = Mail.new("my_email.txt")
p mail2.from
p mail2.to

returns: nil nil

# The same file but I'm using Mail.read:
mail3 = Mail.read("my_email.txt")
p mail3.from
p mail3.to

returns: ["test@gmail.com"] ["test2@gmail.com"]

STDIN I'm testing like:

# cat my_email.txt | ruby code.rb

So the method Mail.read works fine with my e-mail, but when I want to put my stdin to the Mail.read I have:

mail/mail.rb:176:in `initialize': no implicit conversion of Array into String (TypeError)

I know that I can save that file from stdin to the temp folder and then open it by Mail.read but I don't want to do this in that way since it will be slow.

The full url to the gem is: https://github.com/mikel/mail

Luc · Answer 1 · 2015-05-27T09:32:56.850

4

readlines returns an array... of lines! You might want to try read on ARGF which is the input provided by $stdin instead.

mail = Mail.new ARGF.read

See the relevant documentation.

edited May 27 '15 at 09:32

answered May 27 '15 at 08:31

Luc

143
6

You right! I didn't think about it. It works now! :-) – user3612491 May 27 '15 at 08:35
@user3612491 remember that you can accept the most helpful answer (this is completely optional, but a nice way to say thanks) – timgeb Jan 22 '16 at 13:03

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered May 27 '15 at 08:31

IO#readlines produces an array. You want a string there:

# readmail.rb
require 'mail'
mail = Mail.new(STDIN.read)
p mail.from
p mail.to

# mail.eml
From: bob@test.lindsaar.net
To: mikel@test.lindsaar.net
Subject: This is an email

This is the body

# command line
$ ruby readmail.rb < mail.eml
# => ["bob@test.lindsaar.net"]
# => ["mikel@test.lindsaar.net"]

Ruby: how to parse e-mail mime from the stdin

2 Answers2