
=head1 NAME

Mail::Message::Field::Attribute - one attribute of a full field



=head1 SYNOPSIS

 my $field    = $msg->head->get('Content-Disposition') or return;
 my $full     = $field->study;   # full understanding in unicode
 my $filename = $full->attribute('filename')           or return;

 print ref $filename;     # this class name
 print $filename;         # the attributes content in utf-8
 print $filename->value;  # same
 print $filename->string; # print string as was found in the file
 $filename->print(\*OUT); # print as was found in the file


=head1 DESCRIPTION

Attributes within MIME fields can be quite complex, and therefore be slow
and consumes a lot of memory.  The L<Mail::Message::Field::Fast|Mail::Message::Field::Fast> and
L<Mail::Message::Field::Flex|Mail::Message::Field::Flex> simplify them the attributes a lot, which
may result in erroneous behavior in rare cases.  With the increase of
non-western languages on Internet, the need for the complex headers
becomes more and more in demand.

A C<Mail::Message::Field::Attribute> can be found in any structured
L<Mail::Message::Field::Full|Mail::Message::Field::Full> header field.



=head1 METHODS


=head2 Constructors


Mail::Message::Field::Attribute-E<gt>B<new>((NAME, [VALUE] | STRING), OPTIONS)

=over 4

Create a new attribute NAME with the optional VALUE.  If no VALUE is specified,
the first argument of this method is inspected for an equals sign C<'='>.
If that character is present, the argument is taken as STRING, containing
a preformatted attribute which is processed.  Otherwise, the argument is
taken as name without VALUE: set the value later with value().

Whether encoding takes place depends on the OPTIONS and the existence
of non-ascii characters in the VALUE.  The NAME can only contain ascii
characters, hence is never encoded.

To speed things up, attributes are not derived from the L<Mail::Reporter|Mail::Reporter>
base-class.

 Option             Defined in       Default      
 charset                             C<'us-ascii'>
 language                            undef        
 use_continuations                   <true>       

. charset STRING

=over 4

The VALUE is translated from utf-8 (Perl internal) to this character set,
and the resulting string is encoded if required.  C<us-ascii> is the normal
encoding for e-mail.  Valid character sets can be found with 
Encode::encodings(':all').

=back

. language STRING

=over 4

RFC2231 adds the possiblity to specify a language with the field.  When no
language is specified, none is included in the encoding.  Valid language
names are defined by RFC2130.  This module has only limited support for
this feature.

=back

. use_continuations BOOLEAN

=over 4

Continuations are used to break-up long parameters into pieces which
are no longer than 76 characters. Encodings are specified in RFC2231,
but not supported by some Mail User Agents.

=back

I<Example:> 

 my $fn    = Mail::Message::Field::Attribute
                ->new(filename => 'xyz');

 my $fattr = 'Mail::Message::Field::Attribute';  # abbrev
 my $fn    = $fattr->new
     ( filename => "Re\xC7u"
     , charset  => 'iso-8859-15'
     , language => 'nl-BE'
     );
 print $fn;
   # -->  filename*=iso-8859-15'nl-BE'Re%C7u

=back

=head2 The attribute


$obj-E<gt>B<addComponent>(STRING)

=over 4

A component is a parameter as defined by RFC2045, optionally using
encoding or continuations as defined by RFC2231.  Components of an
attribute are found when a field is being parsed.  The RFCs are
very strict on valid characters, but we cannot be: you have to accept
what is coming in if you can.

I<Example:> 

 my $param = Mail::Message::Field::Attribute->new;
 $param->addComponent("filename*=iso10646'nl-BE'%Re\47u");

=back

$obj-E<gt>B<charset>

=over 4

Returns the character set which is used for this parameter.  If any component
is added which contains character set information, this is directly
available.  Be warned that a character-set is case insensitive.

=back

$obj-E<gt>B<language>

=over 4

Returns the language which is defined in the argument.  If no language is
defined C<undef> is returned, which should be interpreted as "ANY"

=back

$obj-E<gt>B<name>

=over 4

Returns the name of this attribute.

=back

$obj-E<gt>B<string>

=over 4

Returns the parameter as reference to an array of lines.  When only one line
is returned, it may be short enough to fit on the same line with other components
of the header field.

=back

$obj-E<gt>B<value>([STRING])

=over 4

Returns the value of this parameter, optionally after setting it first.

=back

=head2 Attribute encoding


$obj-E<gt>B<decode>

=over 4

Translate all known continuations into a value.  The produced value is
returned and may be utf-8 encoded or a plain string.

=back

$obj-E<gt>B<encode>

=over 4

=back

=head2 Internals


$obj-E<gt>B<mergeComponent>(ATTRIBUTE)

=over 4

Merge the components from the specified attribute in this attribute.  This is
needed when components of the same attribute are created separately.  Merging
is required by the field parsing.

=back

=head2 Error handling

This class does not extend L<Mail::Reporter|Mail::Reporter> for obvious performance
reasons: there is no logging or tracing available.



=head1 DIAGNOSTICS

I<Warning:> Illegal character in parameter name '$name'

The specified parameter name contains characters which are not permitted by
the RFCs.  You can better change the name into something which is accepted,
or risk applications to corrupt or ignore the message.

I<Error:> Too late to merge: value already changed.







=head1 REFERENCES

See the MailBox website at L<http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/> for more details.

=head1 COPYRIGHTS

Distribution version 2.058.
Written by Mark Overmeer (mark@overmeer.net).  See the ChangeLog for
other contributors.

Copyright (c) 2001-2003 by the author(s). All rights reserved.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.


