Email::Date(3p)

NAME
Email::Date - Find and Format Date Headers

SYNOPSIS
  use Email::Date;

  my $email = join '', <>;
  my $date  = find_date($email);
  print $date->ymd;

  my $header = format_date($date->epoch);

  Email::Simple->create(
      header => [
          Date => $header,
      ],
      body => '...',
  );

DESCRIPTION
RFC 2822 defines the "Date:" header. It declares the header a required part of an email message. The syntax for date headers is clearly laid out. Stil, even a perfectly planned world has storms. The truth is, many programs get it wrong. Very wrong. Or, they don't include a "Date:" header at all. This often forces you to look elsewhere for the date, and hoping to find something.

For this reason, the tedious process of looking for a valid date has been encapsulated in this software. Further, the process of creating RFC compliant date strings is also found in this software.

  FUNCTIONS

find_date
      my $time_piece = find_date $email;

    "find_date" accepts an email message in any format Email::Abstract can understand. It looks through the email message and finds a date, converting it to a Time::Piece object.

    If it can't find a date, it returns false.

    "find_date" is exported by default.

format_date
      my $date = format_date; # now
      my $date = format_date( time - 60*60 ); # one hour ago

    "format_date" accepts an epoch value, such as the one returned by "time". It returns a string representing the date and time of the input, as specified in RFC 2822. If no input value is provided, the current value of "time" is used.

    "format_date" is exported by default.

format_gmdate
      my $date = format_gmdate;

    "format_gmdate" is identical to "format_date", but it will return a string indicating the time in Greenwich Mean Time, rather than local time.

    "format_gmdate" is exported on demand, but not by default.

PERL EMAIL PROJECT
This module is maintained by the Perl Email Project

<http://emailproject.perl.org/wiki/Email::Date>

SEE ALSO
Email::Abstract, Time::Piece, Date::Parse, perl.

AUTHOR
Casey West, <casey@geeknest.com>.

Ricardo SIGNES, <rjbs@cpan.org>.

COPYRIGHT
  Copyright (c) 2004 Casey West.  All rights reserved.
  This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
  under the same terms as Perl itself.