Question

I need to get the name and email address from a forwarded email where there is a line like this in the body:

From: john smith <[e-mail]>

What is the best way to do this? Is there a good library/gem I should use?

Also this line will vary from which email client it’s sent from and also what language, so I need a more robust way than just matching just this string.

Also some clients do not include the name but just the email address on this line so I need to be able to handle that.

Answer 1

require 'mail'  # only needed for non-Rails
m = Mail.new( "any RFC-conforming email including headers" )
puts m[:from].display_names.first
puts m[:from].addresses.first

The Mail object is automatically included in Rails projects that use ActionMailer – but you’ll need to add it to your Gemfile if you’re not using ActionMailer

Update

I didn’t read the OP’s question properly – they want to get an email address from the body of a forwarded mail. I’d just use some regex:

name, email = m.body.match( /^\s*From:\s*(.*)\s+<(.*)>$/)[1,2]

NB: this assumes a fair amount about the structure of the email – an HTML-only email can easily thwart this regex.