# Reading an email from an mbox file and resending to a differ **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [July 29, 2007, 4:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reading-an-email-from-an-mbox-file-and-resending-to-a-differ/110683 "2007-07-29T16:25:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jballanc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/97f17d/32.png) [@jballanc](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jballanc)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2007, 4:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/reading-an-email-from-an-mbox-file-and-resending-to-a-differ/110683/1 "2007-07-29T16:25:35Z")
Greetings, I’m trying to emulate the “Redirect” function of some email clients but am not having much success. I am sending messages with ActionMailer templates just fine so I’m pretty sure my environment is set up correctly and that my mail server is accepting the messages to relay. I am reading messages out of an mbox file and parsing them into RMail objects with RMail::Parser.read(). Then I’m storing some info about the message as well as storing the a text version of the RMail object in a field as the “raw” message (I get the text version of RMail using to\_s() ) At a different point in the program, I want to “resend” or “redirect” the message to an external email address - but I want it to appear in their mailbox unmodified from the original. I thought the easiest way to do this would be to use Net::SMTP.start() and pass it the “raw” message as well the from/to address for the SMTP transaction (which shouldn’t affect the RFC822 headers in the original message being delivered). I realized along the way that I need to delete the first line from the mbox file that contains the From and Date. When I try this with simple text emails it seems to work. But when I try to attach MIME emails it seems to get confused and creates a new set of RFC822 headers and puts the entire MIME message (including its RFC822 headers) into the body of the new message that is sent. ``` smtp.send_message raw_mail, "removed_email_address@domain.invalid", "removed_email_address@domain.invalid" ``` Any pointers? Is there an easier way to resend a raw RFC822 message than Net::SMTP.start() ? Any idea what could be wrong with my message formatting? Thanks! ~Josh * * * Here is a sample of the “raw” output of a message (truncated) Return-Path: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)\nX-Original-To: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid \nDelivered-To: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid\nReceived: from [ms-smtp-04.xxx.rr.com](http://ms-smtp-04.xxx.rr.com) ([ms-smtp-04.xxx.rr.com](http://ms-smtp-04.xxx.rr.com) [xx.xx.47.43])\n\tby [mail.xxx.com](http://mail.xxx.com) (Postfix) with ESMTP id 15CE495A92\n\tfor [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid); Sat, 14 Jul 2007 12:37:18 -0500 (CDT)\nReceived: from [10.0.1.5] (cpe- [xxx-157-199.xxx.xxx.rr.com](http://xxx-157-199.xxx.xxx.rr.com) [xx.xx.157.199])\n\tby ms- [smtp-04.xxx.rr.com](http://smtp-04.xxx.rr.com) (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l6EHbCjV027495\n\tfor [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid); Sat, 14 Jul 2007 12:37:13 -0500 (CDT)\nResent- Message-Id: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)\nMime- Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v752.2)\nContent-Type: multipart/ alternative; boundary=Apple-Mail-17–30998656\nResent-Date: Sat, 14 Jul 2007 12:37:11 -0500\nMessage-Id: [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)\nResent-To: removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid\nFrom: Stanford Technology Ventures Program [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)\nSubject: Educators Corner highlights - July edition\nResent-From: Joshua B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)\nDate: Wed, 11 Jul 2007 04:35:13 -0700 (PDT)\nTo: Joshua B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid)\nX- Mailer: Apple Mail (2.752.2)\nX-Virus-Scanned: Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine\n\n\n–Apple-Mail-17–30998656\nContent-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit \nContent-Type: text/plain;\n\tcharset=US-ASCII;\n\tdelsp=yes;\n \tformat=flowed\n\nTrouble viewing this email? View it online\n \nRecently Added Videos\n\nListed below are a few video clips of recent speakers from the \nEntrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar.\n \nIncentives for People in a Community-Based Organization\n\nMitchell Baker, Mozilla Corporation - 2 min. 10 sec.\nMitchell Baker, CEO of Mozilla, describes the richness in decision- \nmaking authority that one is endowed with while working in a \ncommunity-based organization like Mozilla. She talks about the