MIME::F...ContType(3)

📦
version 5.517 · 14 versions
, in fedora 44

✨ NAME ✨

MIME::Field::ContType — it's literally a "Content-type" field, bestie 💅

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so first thing: this is a subclass of Mail::Field. A whole subclass, main character energy, no cap 🫶

But listen — do not use this class directly... its name may change in the future! Not me warning you ahead of time 😭 Instead, ask Mail::Field for new instances based on the field name. Let the parent class handle it, it's giving delegation slay ✨

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

    use Mail::Field;
    use MIME::Head;

    # Create an instance from some text:
    $field = Mail::Field->new('Content-type',
                              'text/HTML; charset="US-ASCII"');

    # Get the MIME type, like 'text/plain' or 'x-foobar'.
    # Returns 'text/plain' as default, as per RFC 2045:
    my ($type, $subtype) = split('/', $field->type);

    # Get generic information:
    print $field->name;

    # Get information related to "message" type:
    if ($type eq 'message') {
        print $field->id;
        print $field->number;
        print $field->total;
    }

    # Get information related to "multipart" type:
    if ($type eq 'multipart') {
        print $field->boundary;            # the basic value, fixed up
        print $field->multipart_boundary;  # empty if not a multipart message!
    }

    # Get information related to "text" type:
    if ($type eq 'text') {
        print $field->charset;      # returns 'us-ascii' as default
    }

Like, look at all those methods just waiting for you 🥰 iconic behavior fr fr

👑 PUBLIC INTERFACE 👑

🎀 boundary

Returns the boundary field, bestie. And the boundary is returned exactly as given in the Content-type: field — that means the leading double-hyphen (--) is not prepended. Nope. Not happening. 🙅‍♀️

(Well... almost exactly. From RFC 2046, and I'm quoting here:

(If a boundary appears to end with white space, the white space must be presumed to have been added by a gateway, and must be deleted.)

so we oblige and remove any trailing spaces. We're nothing if not accommodating 💅)

Returns the empty string if there's no boundary, or if the boundary is illegal — like, if it's empty after all that trailing whitespace got removed. Nothing left = nothing returned. Periodt. ✨

🦋 multipart_boundary

Like boundary(), except this one will also hand you back the empty string if the message is not a multipart message. In other words: automatic sanity check, built right in. We love a method that checks itself 🫶

💜 type

Try real hard to determine the content type, okay? Like "text/plain", "image/gif", "x-weird-type" — and it comes back all-lowercase, always.

A happy thing 🥳: the following code will work just as you would want, even if there's no subtype (as in "x-weird-type")... in such a case, the $subtype would simply be the empty string:

    ($type, $subtype) = split('/', $head->mime_type);

If the content-type information is missing, it defaults to "text/plain", as per RFC 2045. Quote time, bestie:

Default RFC 2822 messages are typed by this protocol as plain text in the US-ASCII character set, which can be explicitly specified as "Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii". If no Content-Type is specified, this default is assumed.

Note: under the "be liberal in what we accept" principle 🌈, this routine no longer syntax-checks the content type. If it ain't empty, just downcase and return it. That's it. That's the whole vibe check. ✅

🍓 NOTES 🍓

Since nearly all (if not all) parameters must have non-empty values to be considered valid, we just return the empty string to signify missing fields. Simple as that 💖

If you need to get the real underlying value, use the inherited param() method instead (which returns undef if the parameter is missing). Different method, different rules, iykyk ✨

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

  • MIME::Field::ParamVal
  • Mail::Field

Go read those too, they're the supporting cast and they ate 🔥

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 this was perl v5.42.0, dated 2026-02-11, and it lives in the MIME::F...ContType(3) manual. go forth and parse those content types, you absolute icon 💅✨

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