5.19 Message Functions

The functions described below retrieve information from RFC822 messages. The message to operate upon is identified by its descriptor, an integer number returned by the previous call to mailbox_get_message (see mailbox_get_message) or current_message (see current_message) function. The maximum number of message descriptors is limited by 1024. You can change this limit using the max-open-messages runtime configuration statement (see max-open-messages).

Built-in Function: number message_size (number nmsg)

Return the size of the message nmsg, in bytes. Notice, that if nmsg refers to current message (see current_message), the returned value is less than the size seen by the MTA, because mailfromd recodes CR-LF sequences to LF, i.e. removes carriage returns (ASCII 13) occurring before line feeds (ASCII 10. To obtain actual message length as seen by the MTA, add the number of lines in the message:

  set actual_length message_size(nmsg) + message_lines(nmsg)

Built-in Function: boolean message_body_is_empty (number nmsg)

Returns true if the body of message nmsg has zero size or contains only whitespace characters. If the ‘Content-Transfer-Encoding’ header is present, it is used to decode body before processing.

Built-in Function: void message_close (number nmsg)

Close the message identified by descriptor nmsg.

Built-in Function: number message_lines (number nmsg)

Return total number of lines in message nmsg. The following relation holds true:

message_lines(x) = message_body_lines(x)
                         + message_header_lines(x) + 1

Built-in Function: string message_read_line (number nmsg)

Read and return next line from the message nmsg. If there are no more lines to read, raise the eof exception.

Use message_rewind to rewind the message stream and read its contents again.

Built-in Function: void message_rewind (number nmsg)

Rewind the stream associated with message referred to by descriptor nmsg.

Built-in Function: number message_from_stream (number fd; string filter_chain)

Converts contents of the stream identified by fd to a mail message. Returns identifier of the created message.

Optional filter_chain supplies the name of a Mailutils filter chain, through which the data will be passed before converting. See http://mailutils.org/wiki/Filter_chain, for a description of filter chains.

Built-in Function: void message_to_stream (number fd, number nmsg; string filter_chain)

Copies message nsmg to stream descriptor fd. The descriptor must be obtained by a previous call to open.

Optional filter_chain supplies the name of a Mailutils filter chain, through which the data will be passed before writing them to fd. See http://mailutils.org/wiki/Filter_chain, for a description of filter chains.