邮件格式 (RFC 822)

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邮件是由纯文本组成,其详细的格式有很多 RFC 规范需要遵守。我这里只能对我所了解的,也是基础的 —— 或者说最核心的 —— 格式做一个说明。

最核心的部分是 1982 年的 RFC 822 (STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA INTERNET TEXT MESSAGES),之后又做过一些更新, 比如 RFC 2822 和 RFC 5322 (Internet Message Format) 和一堆补丁更新。本文要讲的基本格式,从开始到现在并没有什么明显变化。

  1. 邮件是一种纯文本格式,最开始只包含 ASCII 字符,后来引入了 MIME 之后,可以制定别的编码,比如 UTF-8 等。

  2. 换行符是 \r\n,也就是 CR + LF。

  3. 整体来说,一封邮件由邮件头(Headers)和邮件体(Payload)组成。

  4. 邮件头包含若干个头字段

  5. 邮件头和邮件体之间用一个空行隔开

  6. RFC2882 和 RFC5322 都规定了电子邮件每一行的长度,排除行末 CRLF,不可以超过 998 个字符,建议不超过 78 个字符。

There are two limits that this specification places on the number of
characters in a line.  Each line of characters MUST be no more than
998 characters, and SHOULD be no more than 78 characters, excluding
the CRLF.

如果太长,应该拆分成多行,下一行行首加上至少一个空格或者制表符,表示是上一行的延续。

邮件示例

From: Bob <bob@markjour.com>
To: Mark <mark@markjour.com>
Subject: Hello

Hello, Bob,

Would you like to join me for dinner?

--
Mark

RFC 822 中关于字符的定义

                                            ; (  Octal, Decimal.)
# 字符
CHAR        =  <any ASCII character>        ; (  0-177,  0.-127.)
# 字母
ALPHA       =  <any ASCII alphabetic character>
                                            ; (101-132, 65.- 90.)
                                            ; (141-172, 97.-122.)
# 数字
DIGIT       =  <any ASCII decimal digit>    ; ( 60- 71, 48.- 57.)
# 控制字符
CTL         =  <any ASCII control           ; (  0- 37,  0.- 31.)
                character and DEL>          ; (    177,     127.)
# 回车
CR          =  <ASCII CR, carriage return>  ; (     15,      13.)
# 换行
LF          =  <ASCII LF, linefeed>         ; (     12,      10.)
# 空格
SPACE       =  <ASCII SP, space>            ; (     40,      32.)
# 制表符
HTAB        =  <ASCII HT, horizontal-tab>   ; (     11,       9.)
# 引号
<">         =  <ASCII quote mark>           ; (     42,      34.)
# 回车换行
CRLF        =  CR LF
# 空白
LWSP-char   =  SPACE / HTAB                 ; semantics = SPACE
# 连贯空白, 折行空白
linear-white-space =  1*([CRLF] LWSP-char)  ; semantics = SPACE
                                            ; CRLF => folding
# 特殊字符
specials    =  "(" / ")" / "<" / ">" / "@"  ; Must be in quoted-
            /  "," / ";" / ":" / "\" / <">  ;  string, to use
            /  "." / "[" / "]"              ;  within a word.
# 分隔符
delimiters  =  specials / linear-white-space / comment
# 文本
text        =  <any CHAR, including bare    ; => atoms, specials,
                CR & bare LF, but NOT       ;  comments and
                including CRLF>             ;  quoted-strings are
                                            ;  NOT recognized.
# 原子字符
atom        =  1*<any CHAR except specials, SPACE and CTLs>
quoted-string = <"> *(qtext/quoted-pair) <">; Regular qtext or
                                            ;   quoted chars.
qtext       =  <any CHAR excepting <">,     ; => may be folded
                "\" & CR, and including
                linear-white-space>
domain-literal =  "[" *(dtext / quoted-pair) "]"
dtext       =  <any CHAR excluding "[",     ; => may be folded
                "]", "\" & CR, & including
                linear-white-space>
# 注释
comment     =  "(" *(ctext / quoted-pair / comment) ")"
ctext       =  <any CHAR excluding "(",     ; => may be folded
                ")", "\" & CR, & including
                linear-white-space>
quoted-pair =  "\" CHAR                     ; may quote any char
phrase      =  1*word                       ; Sequence of words
word        =  atom / quoted-string

对应上 ASCII:

  0 -  31 控制字符, 其中包括常用的:
          - HT ( 9)  水平制表符
          - LF (10) 换行
          - CR (13) 回车
       32 空格
 33 -  47 符号 !"#$%&'()*+,-./
 48 -  57 数字
 58 -  64 符号 :;<=>?@
 65 -  90 大写字母
 91 -  96 符号 [\]^_`
 97 - 122 小写字母
123 - 126 符号 {|}~
      127 控制字符(DEL)

CHAR 0-127
CTL  0-37 + 127

符号中:
()<>[]@,;:\".
    13 个被视作特殊字符,需要转义
!#$%&'*+-/=?^_`
    15 个就是普通符号

atom = 数字 + 字母 + 普通符号

邮件头格式

field       =  field-name ":" [ field-body ] CRLF
     field-name  =  1*<any CHAR, excluding CTLs, SPACE, and ":">
     field-body  =  field-body-contents
                    [CRLF LWSP-char field-body]
     field-body-contents =
                   <the ASCII characters making up the field-body, as
                    defined in the following sections, and consisting
                    of combinations of atom, quoted-string, and
                    specials tokens, or else consisting of texts>

字段名称允许使用的字符范围非常宽泛,而且大小写不敏感,

但是一般实践中:

  • 由字母和中划线组成
  • 首字母大写,或全部大写

常用字段

  • Received MTA 轨迹(传输过程中的相关信息)
  • Date 发信时间,格式:Fri, 21 Nov 1997 09:55:06 -0600
  • Sender Mail From 地址
  • From 发件人
  • Subject 邮件标题
  • To 收件人
  • Cc 抄送
  • Bcc 密送
  • Reply-To 回复地址
  • Message-ID 邮件标识
  • References 回复邮件标识,逗号隔开
  • In-Reply-To 回复邮件标识(会话发起的第一封)
  • Return-Path 发信任地址(2020/07/31,邮件的 Return-Path 头是什么)
  • Comments 说明
  • Keywords 关键字

一般采用 X- 开头的字段名称表示自定义字段,或者叫拓展字段:

常见的拓展字段:

  • X-Mailer
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