NAME

Net::IDN::Punycode - A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for IDNA (RFC 3492)

SYNOPSIS

  use Net::IDN::Punycode qw(:all);
  $punycode = encode_punycode($unicode);
  $unicode  = decode_punycode($punycode);

DESCRIPTION

This module implements the Punycode encoding, and only the Punycode encoding.

This module does not implement any other steps required for converting internationalized domain names (IDNs) to and from ASCII. In particular, it does not do any string preparation as specified by Nameprep/IDNA2008/PRECIS and does not add nor remove the ACE prefix ("xn--"). Thus, use Net::IDN::Encode if you want to convert domain names.

Punycode is an instance of a more general algorithm called Bootstring, which allows strings composed from a small set of "basic" code points to uniquely represent any string of code points drawn from a larger set. Punycode is Bootstring with particular parameter values appropriate for IDNA.

WARNING

You may be tempted to use this module directly and add/remove the ACE prefix ("xn--") in your code for performance reasons. Usually, this is not a good idea. If you convert domain labels (or other strings) without proper preparation, you may end up with an ASCII encoding that is not interoperable or even poses security issues due to spoofing.

Even if you think that your domain names are valid and already mapped to the correct form, this may not be true. For example, some environments might automatically convert your perfectly valid domain names to a different but equivalent Unicode normalization form (e.g., NFD instead of NFC), which already breaks IDNA.

FUNCTIONS

No functions are exported by default. You can use the tag ":all" or import them individually.

The following functions are available:

encode_punycode($input): Encodes $input with Punycode and returns the result.
This function will throw an exception on invalid/unencodable input.
decode_punycode($input): Decodes $input with Punycode and returns the result.
This function will throw an exception on invalid input.

AUTHORS

Tatsuhiko Miyagawa <miyagawa@bulknews.net> (versions 0.01 to 0.02)

Claus Faerber <CFAERBER@cpan.org> (versions 1.000 and higher)

LICENSE

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