NAME

Mail::Graph - draw graphical stats for mails/spams

SYNOPSIS

        use Mail::Graph;

        $graph = Mail::Graph->new( items => 'spam', 
          output => 'spams/',
          input => '~/Mail/spam/',
          );
        $graph->generate();

DESCRIPTION

This module parses mailbox files in either compressed or uncompressed form and then generates pretty statistics and graphs about them. Although at first developed to do spam statistics, it works just fine for normal mail.

File Format

The module reads in files in mbox format. These can be compressed by gzip, or just plain text. Since the module read in any files that are in one directory, it can also handle mail-dir style folders, e.g. a directory where each mail resides in an extra file.

The file format is quite simple and looks like this:

        From sample_foo@example.com  Tue Oct 27 18:38:52 1998
        Received: from barfel by foo.example.com (8.9.1/8.6.12) 
        From: forged_bar@example.com
        X-Envelope-To: <sample_foo@example.com>
        Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 09:52:14 +0100 (CET)
        Message-Id: <199810270852.12345567@example.com>
        To: <none@example.com>
        Subject: Sorry...
        X-Loop-Detect: 1
        X-Spamblock: caught by rule dummy@

        This is a sample spam

Basically, an email header plus email body, separated by the "From" lines.

The following fields are examined to determine:

        X-Envelope-To           the target address/domain
        From address@domain     the sender
        From date               the receiving date

METHODS

new()

Create a new Mail::Graph object.

The following options exist:

        input           Path to a directory containing (gzipped) mbox files
                        Alternatively, name of an (gzipped) mbox file
        index           Directory where to write (and read) the index files
        output          Directory where to write the output stats
        items           Try 'spams' or 'mails' (can be any string)
        generate        hash with names of stats to generate (1=on, 0=off):
                         month           per each month of the year
                         day             per each day of the month
                         hour            per each hour of the day
                         dow             per each day of the week
                         yearly          per year
                         daily           per each day (with average)
                         monthly         per each month
                         toplevel        per top_level domain
                         rule            per filter rule that matched
                         target          per target address
                         domain          per target domain
                         last_x_days     items for each of the last x days
                                         set it to the number of days you want
                         score_histogram show histogram of SpamAssassin scores
                                         set it to the step-width (like 5)
                         score_daily     SA score for each of the last x days
                                         set it to the number of days you want
                         score_scatter   SA scatter score diagram, set it to
                                         the limit of the score (a line will be
                                         draw there)
        average         set to 0 to disable, otherwise it gives the number
                        of days/weeks/month to average over
        average_daily   if not set, uses average, 0 to disable
                        number of days to average over in the daily graph
        height          base height of the generated images
        template        name of the template file (ending in .tpl) that is
                        used to generate the html output, e.g. 'index.tpl'
        no_title        set to 1 to disable graph titles, default 0
        filter_domains  array ref with list of domains to show as "unknown"
        filter_target   array ref with list of targets (regualr expressions)
        graph_ext       extension of the generated graphs, default 'png'
        last_date       in yyyy-mm-dd format: specify the last used date, any
                        mail newer than that will be skipped. Defaults to today
        first_date      in yyyy-mm-dd format: specify the first used date, any
                        mail older than that will be skipped. Defaults to undef
                        meaning any old mail will be considered.

generate()

Generate the stats, fill in the template and write it out. Takes no options.

error()

Return an error message or undef for no error.

BUGS

There are a couple of known bugs, some of the are unfinished features or problem of GD::Graph:

Divide by Zero

This is a bug in some versions of GD::Graph, when generating a graph with only one bar it will crash with this error. If you encounter this, please bug the author of GD::Graph and send me a copy.

Argument "4, 0.7%" isn't numeric

You might get a lot of warnings like

        Argument "4, 0.7%" isn't numeric in numeric lt (<) at 
        /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.2/GD/Graph/Data.pm line 231.

This is a problem with GD::Graph: Mail::Graph wants to use labels like "4, 0.7%" but GD::Graphs uses the same string for the label and the value of the point/bar. And thus Perl warns. This needs a small patch to GD::Graph that strips anything non-numeric out of the label before using it in numeric context. Please bug the author of GD::Graph and send me a copy.

gzipped archives are not included in the stats

Some of the gzipped archives seem to trigger some bug in Compress::Zlib, at least til version v1.32. For instance, on my system on of the sample archives in "/sample/archives/" is not read properly by Compress::Zlib. I already have notified the author of Compress::Zlib.

LICENSE

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.