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 the Ruby docs for more information.

To parse reply body:

parsed_body = EmailReplyParser.parse_reply(email_body)

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.

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

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.

Quoted headers aren't 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 searching for "on" and "wrote". It won't work with other languages.

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

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***********************************