Caller-Supplied Input Routine

To use a caller-supplied input routine, pass the address of the input routine along with the MTA_DECODE_PROC item code to mtaDecodeMessage(). In Example 5–1, the caller supplied routine's name is decode_read().

When using a caller-supplied input routine, each block of data returned by the routine must be a single line of the message. This is the default expectation of mtaDecodeMessage() and corresponds to the MTA_TERM_NONE item code. If, instead, the MTA_TERM_CR, _CRLF, _LF, or _LFCR item code are specified, then the block of data need not correspond to a single, complete line of message data; it may be a portion of a line, multiple lines, or even the entire message.

On each successful call, the input routine should return a status code of zero (MTA_OK). When there is no more message data to provide, then the input routine should return MTA_EOF. The call that returns the last byte of data should return zero; it is the subsequent call that must return MTA_EOF. In the event of an error, the input routine should return a non-zero status code other than MTA_EOF (for example, MTA_NO). This terminates the message parsing process and mtaDecodeMessage() returns an error.