Mailex (Mailex v0.1.3)

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RFC 5322 email message parser.

Mailex parses raw email messages into structured Mailex.Message structs, handling headers, MIME multipart bodies, attachments, and various encodings.

Features

  • RFC 5322 compliant header parsing
  • MIME multipart message support (mixed, alternative, related, digest)
  • Content-Transfer-Encoding decoding (base64, quoted-printable)
  • RFC 2047 encoded-word decoding in headers
  • RFC 2231 parameter continuation and encoding
  • Charset conversion to UTF-8
  • RFC 6532 internationalized email addresses (UTF-8)
  • Message threading (Message-ID, In-Reply-To, References)

Basic Usage

iex> raw_email = """
...> From: sender@example.com
...> To: recipient@example.com
...> Subject: Hello
...> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
...>
...> Hello, World!
...> """
iex> {:ok, message} = Mailex.parse(raw_email)
iex> message.headers["subject"]
"Hello"
iex> message.body
"Hello, World!"

Parsing Multipart Messages

Multipart messages have their parts parsed recursively:

{:ok, message} = Mailex.parse(raw_multipart_email)
message.content_type.type  # => "multipart"
message.content_type.subtype  # => "mixed"
message.parts  # => [%Mailex.Message{}, %Mailex.Message{}, ...]

Error Handling

Use parse/1 for pattern matching on results:

case Mailex.parse(raw) do
  {:ok, message} -> process(message)
  {:error, reason} -> handle_error(reason)
end

Or use parse!/1 when you expect valid input:

message = Mailex.parse!(raw)  # Raises on parse error

Summary

Functions

parse(raw)

Parses a raw email message string.

parse!(raw)

Parses a raw email message string, raising on failure.

Functions

parse(raw)

Parses a raw email message string.

Returns {:ok, message} on success or {:error, reason} on failure.

Examples

iex> Mailex.parse("From: test@example.com\n\nHello")
{:ok, %Mailex.Message{headers: %{"from" => "test@example.com"}, body: "Hello", ...}}

iex> Mailex.parse("")
{:ok, %Mailex.Message{headers: %{}, body: "", ...}}

parse!(raw)

Parses a raw email message string, raising on failure.

Examples

iex> message = Mailex.parse!("From: test@example.com\n\nHello")
iex> message.headers["from"]
"test@example.com"

Raises

Raises a RuntimeError if parsing fails.