mailparser

What is mailparser?

The mailparser npm package is a powerful tool for parsing email messages. It can handle various email formats and extract useful information such as headers, attachments, and the email body. This package is particularly useful for applications that need to process and analyze email content programmatically.

What are mailparser's main functionalities?

Parsing Email from a String

This feature allows you to parse an email from a raw string. The `simpleParser` function takes the raw email string and a callback function, and it returns a parsed email object containing various parts of the email such as headers, text, and attachments.

const { simpleParser } = require('mailparser');

const email = `From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Test email

This is a test email.`;

simpleParser(email, (err, parsed) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  } else {
    console.log(parsed);
  }
});

Parsing Email from a Stream

This feature allows you to parse an email from a stream, such as a file stream. The `simpleParser` function can take a stream as input and parse the email content, making it useful for processing large email files.

const { simpleParser } = require('mailparser');
const fs = require('fs');

const emailStream = fs.createReadStream('path/to/email.eml');

simpleParser(emailStream, (err, parsed) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  } else {
    console.log(parsed);
  }
});

Extracting Attachments

This feature allows you to extract attachments from an email. The parsed email object contains an `attachments` array, where each attachment object includes properties like `filename` and `content`.

const { simpleParser } = require('mailparser');

const email = `From: [e-mail]
To: [e-mail]
Subject: Test email

This is a test email with an attachment.`;

simpleParser(email, (err, parsed) => {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  } else {
    parsed.attachments.forEach(attachment => {
      console.log(attachment.filename);
      console.log(attachment.content);
    });
  }
});

Other packages similar to mailparser

nodemailer

Nodemailer is a module for Node.js applications to allow easy email sending. While it focuses on sending emails rather than parsing them, it can be used in conjunction with mailparser for a complete email handling solution.

imap

The imap package is used to connect to and interact with IMAP email servers. It allows you to fetch emails from an IMAP server, which can then be parsed using mailparser. It is more focused on email retrieval rather than parsing.

mail-listener2

Mail-listener2 is a library for listening to incoming emails using IMAP. It can be used to monitor an email account and retrieve new emails, which can then be parsed using mailparser. It is useful for real-time email processing.

README

MailParser

NB! This version of MailParser is incompatible with pre 0.2.0, do not upgrade from 0.1.x without updating your code, the API is totally different.

MailParser is an asynchronous and non-blocking parser for node.js to parse mime encoded e-mail messages. Handles even large attachments with ease - attachments can be parsed in chunks and streamed if needed.

MailParser parses raw source of e-mail messages into a structured object.

No need to worry about charsets or decoding quoted-printable or base64 data, MailParser (with the help of node-iconv) does all of it for you. All the textual output from MailParser (subject line, addressee names, message body) is always UTF-8.

Live Demo

You can test this module in action here: http://node.ee/MailParser/Demo

Installation

npm install mailparser

Usage

Require MailParser module

var MailParser = require("mailparser").MailParser;

Create a new MailParser object

var mailparser = new MailParser([options]);

Options parameter is an object with the following properties:

• debug - if set to true print all incoming lines to console
• streamAttachments - if set to true, stream attachments instead of including them
• unescapeSMTP - if set to true replace double dots in the beginning of the file
• defaultCharset - the default charset for text/plain and text/html content, if not set reverts to Latin-1

MailParser object is a writable Stream - you can pipe directly files to it or you can send chunks with mailparser.write

When the parsing ends an 'end' event is emitted which has an object with parsed e-mail structure as a parameter.

mailparser.on("end", function(mail){
    mail; // object structure for parsed e-mail
});

Parsed mail object

• headers - unprocessed headers in the form of - {key: value} - if there were multiple fields with the same key then the value is an array
• from - an array of parsed From addresses - [{address:'[e-mail]',name:'Sender Name'}] (should be only one though)
• to - an array of parsed To addresses
• cc - an array of parsed Cc addresses
• subject - the subject line
• text - text body
• html - html body
• alternatives - an array of alternative bodies in addition to the default html and text - [{contentType:"text/plain", content: "..."}]
• attachments - an array of attachments

Decode a simple e-mail

This example decodes an e-mail from a string

var MailParser = require("mailparser").MailParser,
    mailparser = new MailParser();

var email = "From: 'Sender Name' <[e-mail]>\r\n"+
            "To: 'Receiver Name' <[e-mail]>\r\n"+
            "Subject: Hello world!\r\n"+
            "\r\n"+
            "How are you today?";

// setup an event listener when the parsing finishes
mailparser.on("end", function(mail_object){
    console.log("From:", mail_object.from); //[{address:'[e-mail]',name:'Sender Name'}]
    console.log("Subject:", mail_object.subject); // Hello world!
    console.log("Text body:", mail_object.text); // How are you today?
});

// send the email source to the parser
mailparser.write(email);
mailparser.end();

Pipe file to MailParser

This example pipes a readableStream file to MailParser

var MailParser = require("mailparser").MailParser,
    mailparser = new MailParser(),
    fs = require("fs");

mailparser.on("end", function(mail_object){
    console.log("Subject:", mail_object.subject);
});

fs.createReadStream("email.eml").pipe(mailparser);

Attachments

By default any attachment found from the e-mail will be included fully in the final mail structure object as Buffer objects. With large files this might not be desirable so optionally it is possible to redirect the attachments to a Stream and keep only the metadata about the file in the mail structure.

mailparser.on("end", function(mail_object){
    for(var i=0; i<mail_object.attachments.length; i++){
        console.log(mail_object.attachments[i].fileName);
    }
});

Default behavior

By default attachments will be included in the attachment objects as Buffers.

attachments = [{
    contentType: 'image/png',
    fileName: 'image.png',
    contentDisposition: 'attachment',
    contentId: '5.1321281380971@localhost',
    transferEncoding: 'base64',
    length: 126,
    generatedFileName: 'image.png',
    checksum: 'e4cef4c6e26037bcf8166905207ea09b',
    content: <Buffer ...>
}];

The property generatedFileName is usually the same as fileName but if several different attachments with the same name exist or there is no fileName set, an unique name is generated.

Property content is always a Buffer object (or SlowBuffer on some occasions)

Attachment streaming

Attachment streaming can be used when providing an optional options parameter to the MailParser constructor.

var mp = new MailParser({
    streamAttachments: true
}

This way there will be no content property on final attachment objects (but the other fields will remain).

To catch the streams you should listen for attachment events on the MailParser object. The parameter provided includes file information (contentType, fileName, contentId) and a readable Stream object stream.

var mp = new MailParser({
    streamAttachments: true
}

mp.on("attachment", function(attachment){
    var output = fs.createWriteStream(attachment.fileName);
    attachment.stream.pipe(output);
});

In this case the fileName parameter is equal to generatedFileName property on the main attachment object - you can match attachment streams to the main attachment objects through these values.

Testing attachment integrity

Attachment objects include length property which is the length of the attachment in bytes and checksum property which is a md5 hash of the file.

Running tests

You need to have nodeunit installed for running tests

nodeunit test/run_tests.js

There aren't many tests yet but basics should be covered.

Issues

S/MIME

Currently it is not possible to verify signed content as the incoming text is split to lines when parsing and line ending characters are not preserved. One can assume it is always \r\n but this might not be always the case.

Seeking

Due to the line based parsing it is also not possible to explicitly state the beginning and ending bytes of the attachments for later source seeking.

License

MIT