I am trying to get the hang of Perl and it's modules by making a simple web-based email client. I have completed the main page, and a page to retreive text email. Currently I am working on the page to send text email and have it 95% done. My problem is that it throws an error from the module I am using, specifically the open function.

<error message>
Died at C:/Perl/site/lib/Mail/Mailer.pm line 269.
</error message>

My code (taken almost verbatum from the Perl Cookbook):

my $SERVER = 'mail.domain.com';

...

sub send_text_message
{
   # get our working variables
   my $to = $_[0];
   my $from = $_[1];
   my $subject = $_[2];
   my $body = $_[3];
    
   eval
   {
    my $mail = new Mail::Mailer ('smtp', server=>$SERVER);
    $mail->open({    From=>$from,
            To=>$to,
            Subject=>$subject,
        }) or die ("Can't send email headers: $!\n");
    print $mail $body;
    $mail->close();
   };
   if($@)
   {
    print $page -> header(-type=> 'text/html',
                  -charset=> 'utf8'),
          $page->p($@);
    return 0;
   }
   else
   {
    return 1;
   }
}
[download]

Modules code:

sub open {
    my($self, $hdrs) = @_;
    my $exe = *$self->{Exe}; # || Carp::croak "$self->open: bad exe";
    my $args = *$self->{Args};

# removed MO 20050331: destroyed the folding
#   _cleanup_hdrs($hdrs);

    my @to = $self->who_to($hdrs);
    
    $self->close;    # just in case;

    # Fork and start a mailer
    (defined($exe) && open($self,"|-"))   # <- line dying on
    || $self->exec($exe, $args, \@to)
    || die $!;

    # Set the headers
    $self->set_headers($hdrs);

    # return self (a FileHandle) ready to accept the body
    $self;
}
[download]

I do not have a SMTP server on the localhost (I'm trying to get around that by using smtp setting). I have error handling to make sure the user is notified that the email wasn't sent. Any ideas why the open function can't send out an email?