MIME::Lite truncating attachment

gcoates has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm using the MIME::Lite module to attach a CSV file to emails that are being sent out via sendmail. I'm having a problem though; the attachment is being truncating around 90 characters or so. Does anyone have any idea what's going on? Here's my code:

sub email_results {
  my %vars = $cgi->Vars();

  my $msg = MIME::Lite->new (
    From => $email,
    To => $email,
    Subject => 'Credit Card Survey Results',
    Type => 'multipart/mixed'
  );

  my $body = ();
  my $csv = '"';
  foreach my $key (sort keys %vars) {
    $body .= "$key: $vars{$key}\n";
    $csv .= "$vars{$key}" . '","';
  }
  chop($csv);
  chop($csv);

  $msg->attach (
    Type => 'TEXT',
    Data => $body
  );

  my $attachment = MIME::Lite->new (
    Type => 'text/csv',
    Data => $csv,
    Disposition => 'attachment'
  );
  $attachment->attr('content-type.name' => 'survey.csv');

  $msg->attach($attachment) or die "Error attaching CSV file: $!";
  $msg->send();
}
[download]

Comment on MIME::Lite truncating attachment Download Code

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Re: MIME::Lite truncating attachment by jethro (Monsignor) on Jul 01, 2008 at 02:00 UTC
Did you try to change $msg->send() to $msg->print() ? This might give you a hint whether the error occurs while constructing or sending the message. I tested your sub (on linux, without sending the email, just with $msg->print(), some sample data and on the command line instead of on a web server) and it worked fine, nothing got truncated. I had Mime::Lite version 3.021 and got the following attachement header: `MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: attachment Content-Length: 1459 Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary Content-Type: text/csv; name="survey.csv" X-Mailer: MIME::Lite 3.021 (F2.76; T1.24; A2.03; B3.07_01; Q3.07) Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 03:53:31 +0200` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: MIME::Lite truncating attachment by pc88mxer (Vicar) on Jul 01, 2008 at 01:48 UTC
Can you show us the raw mail message together with the GET or POST data that generated it? I notice that you are not properly quoting your CSV values. use the `combine()` method of Text::CSV to ensure that it is formatted correctly.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: MIME::Lite truncating attachment by bradcathey (Prior) on Jul 01, 2008 at 12:27 UTC
This is not an answer, but a question for anyone. What is happening here: `my $body = (); my $csv = '"';` [download] in the above code? Wouldn't: `my ( $body, $csv );` [download] suffice? Or is there some reason to declare the array ref `$body` if that is what's happening here? Thanks! —Brad "The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men." George Eliot	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: MIME::Lite truncating attachment by gcoates (Novice) on Jul 01, 2008 at 16:43 UTC
Thanks for the tips, folks. I figured out what happened. The CGI module uses a null string (\0) to separate values in multi-valued parameters. Those nulls where choking the email program. Replacing the null strings with another separator fixed the problem.	[reply]
Re^2: MIME::Lite truncating attachment by jethro (Monsignor) on Jul 01, 2008 at 14:24 UTC
I first thought $body would be initialized to '0' as the size of the list similar to `@b=(); $body=@b` But $body gets initialized to the empty string. Seems (by running `perl -D1 -e '$b=();'`) that () is interpreted as an empty term folding to a (wrong!?) boolean expression like `$body=(1==0)` `my ( $body,$csv)=('','"');` would suffice, your code misses the initialization. If you run that without 'use strict' you won't get errors, but $csv is still missing the init to '"', so the first value in the $csv string would have no opening quotation mark	[reply] [d/l] [select]