Email::MIME can't parse message from Gmail - perl

Question

So I'm using PERL and Email::MIME to get an email from gmail. Here is my code:
use Net::IMAP::Simple::Gmail;
use Email::Mime;
# Creat the object that will read the emails
$server = 'imap.gmail.com';
$imap = Net::IMAP::Simple::Gmail->new($server);
# User and password
$user = 'username#gmail.com';
$password = 'passowrd';
$imap->login($user => $password);
# Select the INBOX and returns the number of messages
$numberOfMessages = $imap->select('INBOX');
# Now let's go through the messages from the top
for ($i = 1; $i <= $numberOfMessages; $i++)
{
$top = $imap->top($i);
print "top = $top\n";
$email = Email::MIME->new( join '', #{ $imap->top($i) } );
$body = $email->body_str;
print "Body = $body\n";
}#end for i
When I run it, I get the following error:
can't get body as a string for multipart/related; boundary="----=_Part_6796768_17893472.1369009276778"; type="text/html" at /Library/Perl/5.8.8/Email/Mime.pm line 341
Email::MIME::body_str('Email::MIME=HASH(0x87afb4)') called at readPhoneEmailFeed.pl line 37
If I replace
$body = $email->body_str;
with
$body = $email->body;
I get the output:
Body =
(i.e. empty string)
What's going on here? is there a way for me to get the raw body of the message (->body_raw doesn't work either)? I'm okay with parsing out the body using regex

Answer 1

Email::MIME is not the best documented package I have ever seen.
The body and body_str methods only work on a single mime part. Mostly that would be a simple text message. For anything more complex use the parts method to get each mime component which is itself an Email::MIME object. The body and body_str methods should work on that. An html formatted message will generally have two MIME parts: text/plain and text/html.
This isn't exactly what you want but should be enough to show you what is going on.
my #parts = $email->parts;
for my $part (#parts) {
print "type: ", $part->content_type, "\n";
print "body: ", $part->body, "\n";
}