[Bug]: Herd Mailserver crashes with `RangeError: Invalid time value` on malformed/missing Date header

[andyunleashed]

Platform

macOS

Operating system version

Tahoe 26.3.1

System architecture

ARM64 (M1, M2, etc)

Herd Version

1.28.0

PHP Version

PHP 8.4

Bug description

When sending an email via the Herd Mail SMTP server (port 2525) using a raw socket connection (e.g., basic PHP fsockopen), the Mailserver process crashes if the Date header is missing or malformed.

Steps to reproduce

Steps to Reproduce

1. Start the Herd Mail service.
2. Send a raw SMTP DATA command payload that does not include a Date: header.
3. The Node.js process for the mailserver will crash immediately with the above error.

Expected Behavior

• Automatically inject a valid Date header if missing
• Fail gracefully with an SMTP error code rather than an uncaught Node.js exception that kills the service.

To solve it locally I popped in a date header, e.g: 'Date' => date('r'),

Log output

node:internal/process/promises:288
            triggerUncaughtException(err, true /* fromPromise */);
            ^
RangeError: Invalid time value
    at Date.toISOString (<anonymous>)
    at ensureMessageTypes (/snapshot/herd-mailserver/lib/ensureMessageTypes.js)
    at /snapshot/herd-mailserver/index.js

[andyunleashed]

I know that Herd is intended for use with Laravel/Wordpress et al, but in this case I was just creating an old school, straight up, PHP site and slapped in a mail function for a simple contact form and it ended up murdering Herd's mailserver.