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· 3 min read
Mauro D.

Back in November we released mail-parser, a Rust library to parse MIME e-mail messages of any complexity. Today we are proud to announce the release of mail-builder, a simple yet powerful library to build RFC5322 e-mail messages with MIME support.

Using mail-builder is straightforward:

        // Build a simple text message with a single attachment
let mut message = MessageBuilder::new();
message.from(("John Doe", "[email protected]"));
message.to("[email protected]");
message.subject("Hello, world!");
message.text_body("Message contents go here.");
message.binary_attachment("image/png", "image.png", &[1, 2, 3, 4]);

// Write message to memory
let mut output = Vec::new();
message.write_to(&mut output).unwrap();

More complex messages with grouped addresses, inline parts and multipart/alternative sections can also be easily built:

        // Build a multipart message with text and HTML bodies,
// inline parts and attachments.
let mut message = MessageBuilder::new();
message.from(("John Doe", "[email protected]"));

// To recipients
message.to(vec![
("Antoine de Saint-Exupéry", "[email protected]"),
("안녕하세요 세계", "[email protected]"),
("Xin chào", "[email protected]"),
]);

// BCC recipients using grouped addresses
message.bcc(vec![
(
"My Group",
vec![
("ASCII name", "[email protected]"),
("ハロー・ワールド", "[email protected]"),
("áéíóú", "[email protected]"),
("Γειά σου Κόσμε", "[email protected]"),
],
),
(
"Another Group",
vec![
("שלום עולם", "[email protected]"),
("ñandú come ñoquis", "[email protected]"),
("Recipient", "[email protected]"),
],
),
]);

// Set RFC and custom headers
message.subject("Testing multipart messages");
message.in_reply_to(vec!["message-id-1", "message-id-2"]);
message.header("List-Archive", URL::new("http://example.com/archive"));

// Set HTML and plain text bodies
message.text_body("This is the text body!\n");
message.html_body("<p>HTML body with <img src=\"cid:my-image\"/>!</p>");

// Include an embedded image as an inline part
message.binary_inline("image/png", "cid:my-image", &[0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]);

// Add a text and a binary attachment
message.text_attachment("text/plain", "my fíle.txt", "Attachment contents go here.");
message.binary_attachment(
"text/plain",
"ハロー・ワールド",
b"Binary contents go here.",
);

// Write the message to a file
message
.write_to(File::create("message.eml").unwrap())
.unwrap();

Nested MIME body structures can be created using the body method:

    // Build a nested multipart message
let mut message = MessageBuilder::new();

message.from(Address::new_address("John Doe".into(), "[email protected]"));
message.to(Address::new_address("Jane Doe".into(), "[email protected]"));
message.subject("Nested multipart message");

// Define the nested MIME body structure
message.body(MimePart::new_multipart(
"multipart/mixed",
vec![
MimePart::new_text("Part A contents go here...").inline(),
MimePart::new_multipart(
"multipart/mixed",
vec![
MimePart::new_multipart(
"multipart/alternative",
vec![
MimePart::new_multipart(
"multipart/mixed",
vec![
MimePart::new_text("Part B contents go here...").inline(),
MimePart::new_binary(
"image/jpeg",
"Part C contents go here...".as_bytes(),
)
.inline(),
MimePart::new_text("Part D contents go here...").inline(),
],
),
MimePart::new_multipart(
"multipart/related",
vec![
MimePart::new_html("Part E contents go here...").inline(),
MimePart::new_binary(
"image/jpeg",
"Part F contents go here...".as_bytes(),
),
],
),
],
),
MimePart::new_binary("image/jpeg", "Part G contents go here...".as_bytes())
.attachment("image_G.jpg"),
MimePart::new_binary(
"application/x-excel",
"Part H contents go here...".as_bytes(),
),
MimePart::new_binary(
"x-message/rfc822",
"Part J contents go here...".as_bytes(),
),
],
),
MimePart::new_text("Part K contents go here...").inline(),
],
));

// Write the message to a file
message
.write_to(File::create("nested-message.eml").unwrap())
.unwrap();

The library is available at https://crates.io/crates/mail-builder and the documentation at https://docs.rs/mail-builder.

· 5 min read
Mauro D.

Today we released mail-parser, an e-mail parsing library written in Rust that fully conforms to the Internet Message Format standard (RFC 5322), the Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME; RFC 2045–2049) as well as other internet messaging RFCs.

It also supports decoding messages in 41 different character sets including obsolete formats such as UTF-7. All Unicode (UTF-*) and single-byte character sets are handled internally by the library while support for legacy multi-byte encodings of Chinese and Japanese languages such as BIG5 or ISO-2022-JP is provided by the optional dependency encoding_rs.

In general, this library abides by the Postel’s law or Robustness Principle which states that an implementation must be conservative in its sending behavior and liberal in its receiving behavior. This means that mail-parser will make a best effort to parse non-conformant e-mail messages as long as these do not deviate too much from the standard.

Unlike other e-mail parsing libraries that return nested representations of the different MIME parts in a message, this library conforms to RFC 8621, Section 4.1.4 and provides a more human-friendly representation of the message contents consisting of just text body parts, html body parts and attachments. Additionally, conversion to/from HTML and plain text inline body parts is done automatically when the alternative version is missing.

Performance and memory safety were two important factors while designing mail-parser:

  • Zero-copy: Practically all strings returned by this library are Cow<str> references to the input raw message.
  • High performance Base64 decoding based on Chromium’s decoder (the fastest non-SIMD decoder).
  • Fast parsing of message header fields, character set names and HTML entities using perfect hashing.
  • Written in 100% safe Rust with no external dependencies.
  • Every function in the library has been fuzzed and meticulously tested with MIRI.
  • Thoroughly battle-tested with millions of real-world e-mail messages dating from 1995 until today.

The library conforms to all internet messaging RFCs:

And supports 41 different character set encodings:

  • UTF-8
  • UTF-16, UTF-16BE, UTF-16LE
  • UTF-7
  • US-ASCII
  • ISO-8859–1
  • ISO-8859–2
  • ISO-8859–3
  • ISO-8859–4
  • ISO-8859–5
  • ISO-8859–6
  • ISO-8859–7
  • ISO-8859–8
  • ISO-8859–9
  • ISO-8859–10
  • ISO-8859–13
  • ISO-8859–14
  • ISO-8859–15
  • ISO-8859–16
  • CP1250
  • CP1251
  • CP1252
  • CP1253
  • CP1254
  • CP1255
  • CP1256
  • CP1257
  • CP1258
  • KOI8-R
  • KOI8_U
  • MACINTOSH
  • IBM850
  • TIS-620
  • SHIFT_JIS
  • BIG5
  • EUC-JP
  • EUC-KR
  • GB18030
  • GBK
  • ISO-2022-JP
  • WINDOWS-874
  • IBM-866

Using the library is straightforward:

    let input = concat!(
"From: Art Vandelay <[email protected]> (Vandelay Industries)\n",
"To: \"Colleagues\": \"James Smythe\" <[email protected]>; Friends:\n",
" [email protected], =?UTF-8?Q?John_Sm=C3=AEth?= <[email protected]>;\n",
"Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2021 14:22:01 -0800\n",
"Subject: Why not both importing AND exporting? =?utf-8?b?4pi6?=\n",
"Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"festivus\";\n\n",
"--festivus\n",
"Content-Type: text/html; charset=\"us-ascii\"\n",
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64\n\n",
"PGh0bWw+PHA+SSB3YXMgdGhpbmtpbmcgYWJvdXQgcXVpdHRpbmcgdGhlICZsZHF1bztle\n",
"HBvcnRpbmcmcmRxdW87IHRvIGZvY3VzIGp1c3Qgb24gdGhlICZsZHF1bztpbXBvcnRpbm\n",
"cmcmRxdW87LDwvcD48cD5idXQgdGhlbiBJIHRob3VnaHQsIHdoeSBub3QgZG8gYm90aD8\n",
"gJiN4MjYzQTs8L3A+PC9odG1sPg==\n",
"--festivus\n",
"Content-Type: message/rfc822\n\n",
"From: \"Cosmo Kramer\" <[email protected]>\n",
"Subject: Exporting my book about coffee tables\n",
"Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=\"giddyup\";\n\n",
"--giddyup\n",
"Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"utf-16\"\n",
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable\n\n",
"=FF=FE=0C!5=D8\"=DD5=D8)=DD5=D8-=DD =005=D8*=DD5=D8\"=DD =005=D8\"=\n",
"=DD5=D85=DD5=D8-=DD5=D8,=DD5=D8/=DD5=D81=DD =005=D8*=DD5=D86=DD =\n",
"=005=D8=1F=DD5=D8,=DD5=D8,=DD5=D8(=DD =005=D8-=DD5=D8)=DD5=D8\"=\n",
"=DD5=D8=1E=DD5=D80=DD5=D8\"=DD!=00\n",
"--giddyup\n",
"Content-Type: image/gif; name*1=\"about \"; name*0=\"Book \";\n",
" name*2*=utf-8''%e2%98%95 tables.gif\n",
"Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64\n",
"Content-Disposition: attachment\n\n",
"R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7\n",
"--giddyup--\n",
"--festivus--\n",
)
.as_bytes();

let message = Message::parse(input);

// Parses addresses (including comments), lists and groups
assert_eq!(
message.get_from(),
&Address::Address(Addr {
name: Some("Art Vandelay (Vandelay Industries)".into()),
address: Some("[email protected]".into())
})
);
assert_eq!(
message.get_to(),
&Address::GroupList(vec![
Group {
name: Some("Colleagues".into()),
addresses: vec![Addr {
name: Some("James Smythe".into()),
address: Some("[email protected]".into())
}]
},
Group {
name: Some("Friends".into()),
addresses: vec![
Addr {
name: None,
address: Some("[email protected]".into())
},
Addr {
name: Some("John Smîth".into()),
address: Some("[email protected]".into())
}
]
}
])
);

assert_eq!(
message.get_date().unwrap().to_iso8601(),
"2021-11-20T14:22:01-08:00"
);

// RFC2047 support for encoded text in message readers
assert_eq!(
message.get_subject().unwrap(),
"Why not both importing AND exporting? ☺"
);

// HTML and text body parts are returned conforming to RFC8621, Section 4.1.4
assert_eq!(
message.get_html_body(0).unwrap().to_string(),
concat!(
"<html><p>I was thinking about quitting the &ldquo;exporting&rdquo; to ",
"focus just on the &ldquo;importing&rdquo;,</p><p>but then I thought,",
" why not do both? &#x263A;</p></html>"
)
);

// HTML parts are converted to plain text (and viceversa) when missing
assert_eq!(
message.get_text_body(0).unwrap().to_string(),
concat!(
"I was thinking about quitting the “exporting” to focus just on the",
" “importing”,\nbut then I thought, why not do both? ☺\n"
)
);

// Supports nested messages as well as multipart/digest
let nested_message = match message.get_attachment(0).unwrap() {
MessagePart::Message(v) => v,
_ => unreachable!(),
};

assert_eq!(
nested_message.get_subject().unwrap(),
"Exporting my book about coffee tables"
);

// Handles UTF-* as well as many legacy encodings
assert_eq!(
nested_message.get_text_body(0).unwrap().to_string(),
"ℌ𝔢𝔩𝔭 𝔪𝔢 𝔢𝔵𝔭𝔬𝔯𝔱 𝔪𝔶 𝔟𝔬𝔬𝔨 𝔭𝔩𝔢𝔞𝔰𝔢!"
);
assert_eq!(
nested_message.get_html_body(0).unwrap().to_string(),
"<html><body>ℌ𝔢𝔩𝔭 𝔪𝔢 𝔢𝔵𝔭𝔬𝔯𝔱 𝔪𝔶 𝔟𝔬𝔬𝔨 𝔭𝔩𝔢𝔞𝔰𝔢!</body></html>"
);

let nested_attachment = match nested_message.get_attachment(0).unwrap() {
MessagePart::Binary(v) => v,
_ => unreachable!(),
};

assert_eq!(nested_attachment.len(), 42);

// Full RFC2231 support for continuations and character sets
assert_eq!(
nested_attachment
.get_header()
.unwrap()
.get_content_type()
.unwrap()
.get_attribute("name")
.unwrap(),
"Book about ☕ tables.gif"
);

// Integrates with Serde
println!("{}", serde_json::to_string_pretty(&message).unwrap());
println!("{}", serde_yaml::to_string(&message).unwrap());

The mail-parser library is available on Crates.io (https://crates.io/crates/mail-parser) and the documentation at https://docs.rs/mail-parser/.

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