Doc/library/mimify.rst

:mod:`mimify` --- MIME processing of mail messages
==================================================

.. module:: mimify
   :synopsis: Mimification and unmimification of mail messages.


.. deprecated:: 2.3
   The :mod:`email` package should be used in preference to the :mod:`mimify`
   module.  This module is present only to maintain backward compatibility.

The :mod:`mimify` module defines two functions to convert mail messages to and
from MIME format.  The mail message can be either a simple message or a
so-called multipart message.  Each part is treated separately. Mimifying (a part
of) a message entails encoding the message as quoted-printable if it contains
any characters that cannot be represented using 7-bit ASCII.  Unmimifying (a
part of) a message entails undoing the quoted-printable encoding.  Mimify and
unmimify are especially useful when a message has to be edited before being
sent.  Typical use would be::

   unmimify message
   edit message
   mimify message
   send message

The modules defines the following user-callable functions and user-settable
variables:


.. function:: mimify(infile, outfile)

   Copy the message in *infile* to *outfile*, converting parts to quoted-printable
   and adding MIME mail headers when necessary. *infile* and *outfile* can be file
   objects (actually, any object that has a :meth:`readline` method (for *infile*)
   or a :meth:`write` method (for *outfile*)) or strings naming the files. If
   *infile* and *outfile* are both strings, they may have the same value.


.. function:: unmimify(infile, outfile[, decode_base64])

   Copy the message in *infile* to *outfile*, decoding all quoted-printable parts.
   *infile* and *outfile* can be file objects (actually, any object that has a
   :meth:`readline` method (for *infile*) or a :meth:`write` method (for
   *outfile*)) or strings naming the files.  If *infile* and *outfile* are both
   strings, they may have the same value. If the *decode_base64* argument is
   provided and tests true, any parts that are coded in the base64 encoding are
   decoded as well.


.. function:: mime_decode_header(line)

   Return a decoded version of the encoded header line in *line*. This only
   supports the ISO 8859-1 charset (Latin-1).


.. function:: mime_encode_header(line)

   Return a MIME-encoded version of the header line in *line*.


.. data:: MAXLEN

   By default, a part will be encoded as quoted-printable when it contains any
   non-ASCII characters (characters with the 8th bit set), or if there are any
   lines longer than :const:`MAXLEN` characters (default value 200).


.. data:: CHARSET

   When not specified in the mail headers, a character set must be filled in.  The
   string used is stored in :const:`CHARSET`, and the default value is ISO-8859-1
   (also known as Latin1 (latin-one)).

This module can also be used from the command line.  Usage is as follows::

   mimify.py -e [-l length] [infile [outfile]]
   mimify.py -d [-b] [infile [outfile]]

to encode (mimify) and decode (unmimify) respectively.  *infile* defaults to
standard input, *outfile* defaults to standard output. The same file can be
specified for input and output.

If the **-l** option is given when encoding, if there are any lines longer than
the specified *length*, the containing part will be encoded.

If the **-b** option is given when decoding, any base64 parts will be decoded as
well.


.. seealso::

   Module :mod:`quopri`
      Encode and decode MIME quoted-printable files.