Access e-mails on an Exchange server with a scripting language

Question

I have several daily reports that are automatically e-mailed to an Exchange account that I normally access through Outlook Web Access. As part of my job I get to log in daily and record numbers into a master stats file. Fun times. Not.

I would love to be able to write a Perl script to parse the e-mails for the relevant data so I don't have to do it manually anymore. Each e-mail comes in a consistent format, so parsing it won't be a problem. Making the e-mails accessible to Perl is the tricky part.

What would be the best way to have a Perl script access and parse e-mails on an Exchange server?

Answer 1

Exchange supports IMAP and POP connectors. And at many corporations, these connectors are left enabled (for easy access from platforms that may not have MS Outlook clients, such as unix)

If there is an IMAP and/or POP interface enabled in your environment (just ask your sys-admin), then this task will become a lot easier.

With a google search, I was able to come with these (some are old, so not sure if they will still work or not):

• Mail::IMapClient CPAN module, Tutorial
• checkmails
• dicemail
• Chilkat Perl IMAP library

There is also this module which can apparently access native exchange folders:

• Email::Folder::Exchange

Hope this helps.