11.12 Standard Module rfc822

   

This module defines a class, Message, which represents a collection of ``email headers'' as defined by the Internet standard RFC 822. It is used in various contexts, usually to read such headers from a file.

Note that there's a separate module to read Unix, MH, and MMDF style mailbox files: mailbox.  

A Message instance is instantiated with an open file object as parameter. The optional seekable parameter indicates if the file object is seekable; the default value is 1 for true. Instantiation reads headers from the file up to a blank line and stores them in the instance; after instantiation, the file is positioned directly after the blank line that terminates the headers.

Input lines as read from the file may either be terminated by CR-LF or by a single linefeed; a terminating CR-LF is replaced by a single linefeed before the line is stored.

All header matching is done independent of upper or lower case; e.g. m['From'], m['from'] and m['FROM'] all yield the same result.

parsedate (date)

Attempts to parse a date according to the rules in RFC 822. however, some mailers don't follow that format as specified, so parsedate() tries to guess correctly in such cases. date is a string containing an RFC 822 date, such as "Mon, 20 Nov 1995 19:12:08 -0500". If it succeeds in parsing the date, parsedate() returns a 9-tuple that can be passed directly to time.mktime(); otherwise None will be returned.

parsedate_tz (date)

Performs the same function as parsedate, but returns either None or a 10-tuple; the first 9 elements make up a tuple that can be passed directly to time.mktime(), and the tenth is the offset of the date's time zone from UTC (which is the official term for Greenwich Mean Time).

• Message Objects