NAME
Mail::Thread - Perl implementation of JWZ's mail threading algorithm
SYNOPSIS
use Mail::Thread;
my $threader = new Mail::Thread (@messages);
$threader->thread;
dump_em($_,0) for $threader->rootset;
sub dump_em {
my ($self, $level) = @_;
debug (' \\-> ' x $level);
if ($self->message) {
print $self->message->head->get("Subject") , "\n";
} else {
print "[ Message $self not available ]\n";
}
dump_em($self->child, $level+1) if $self->child;
dump_em($self->next, $level) if $self->next;
}DESCRIPTION
This module implements something relatively close to Jamie Zawinski's mail threading algorithm, as described by http://www.jwz.org/doc/threading.html. Any deviations from the algorithm are accidental.
It doesn't do threading by subject yet, because I don't need it yet.
It's happy to be handed Mail::Internet and Mail::Box::Message objects, since they're more or less the same, but nothing other than that.
METHODS
new(@messages)
Creates a new threader; requires a bunch of messages to thread.
thread
Goes away and threads the messages together.
rootset
Returns a list of Mail::Thread::Containers which are not the parents of any other message.
Mail::Thread::Container methods
Mail::Thread::Containers are the nodes of the thread tree. You can't just have the ordinary messages, because we might not have the message in question. For instance, a mailbox could contain two replies to a question that we haven't received yet. So all "logical" messages are stuffed in containers, whether we happen to have that container or not.
To do anything useful with the thread tree, you're going to have to recurse around the list of Mail::Thread::Containers. You do this with the following methods:
parent
child
next
Returns the container which is the parent, child or immediate sibling of this one, if one exists.
message
Returns the message held in this container, if we have one.
id
Returns the message ID for this container. This will be around whether we have the message or not, since some other message will have referred to it by message ID.
find_child($child)
Returns true if this container has the given container as a child somewhere beneath it.
children
Returns a list of the immediate children of this container.
recurse_down($callback)
Calls the given callback on this node and all of its children.
AUTHOR
Simon Cozens, <simon@kasei.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 2003 by Kasei
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.