Email Reply Parser

EmailReplyParser is a small library to parse plain text email content. See the rocco-documented source code for specifics on how it works.

This is what GitHub uses to display comments that were created from email replies. This code is being open sourced in an effort to crowdsource the quality of our email representation.

See more at the Rocco docs.

Problem?

If you have a question about the behavior and formatting of email replies on GitHub, check out support. If you have a specific issue regarding this library, then hit up the Issues.

Installation

Get it from GitHub or gem install email_reply_parser. Run rake to run the tests.

Contribute

If you'd like to hack on EmailReplyParser, start by forking the repo on GitHub:

https://github.com/github/email_reply_parser

The best way to get your changes merged back into core is as follows:

Clone down your fork
Create a thoughtfully named topic branch to contain your change
Hack away
Add tests and make sure everything still passes by running rake
If you are adding new functionality, document it in the README
Do not change the version number, I will do that on my end
If necessary, rebase your commits into logical chunks, without errors
Push the branch up to GitHub
Send a pull request to the github/email_reply_parser project.

Known Issues

Quoted Headers

Quoted headers aren't picked up if there's an extra line break:

On <date>, <author> wrote:

> blah

Also, they're not picked up if the email client breaks it up into multiple lines. GMail breaks up any lines over 80 characters for you.

On <date>, <author>
wrote:
> blah

Not to mention that we're search for "on" and "wrote". It won't work with other languages.

Possible solution: Remove "reply@reply.github.com" lines...

Weird Signatures

Lines starting with - or _ sometimes mark the beginning of signatures:

Hello

-- 
Rick

Not everyone follows this convention:

Hello

Mr Rick Olson
Galactic President Superstar Mc Awesomeville
GitHub

**********************DISCLAIMER***********************************
* Note: blah blah blah                                            *
**********************DISCLAIMER***********************************

Strange Quoting

Apparently, prefixing lines with > isn't universal either:

Hello

--
Rick

________________________________________
From: Bob [reply@reply.github.com]
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2011 6:16 PM
To: Rick

drydevelopment/email_reply_parser