UBB.Developers Forums UBB.classic V6.4 - 6.7 Modifications V6 Mod Ideas IDEA: Post to UBB via e-mail [FLAG TO CHARLES]

i've seen some CGI or Perl code somewhere that allows one to post information to a webpage through e-mail. i think it would be very cool to have this functionality. posting w/ attachments would be even cooler. think i'll try to work on this one for my 1st hack. please reply w/ any advice, constructive criticism, etc.

Greg Edit: Just asking charles to give his 411.

that would really be cool. let me know if you get it to work. I'd also like some sort of email notification for 6.1 to send emails for new posts, or even to email the post to everyone on the board!!! Anyone do anything like this?

hmmm... I'd like to see how you'll do it... never seen anything like it, but it sounds interesting

[ 01-19-2002 09:39 AM: Message edited by: pumpkin ]

i know that it can be done because Yahoo! eGroups utilize this feature. i think it's an essential feature for a messageboard system. you can also receive all posts via e-mail or just digests, etc. some other boards allow you to subscribe to threads, forums, or posts by a specific author also. some of those features are in OpenTopic. i'm researching it right now. also don't know Perl, but this will be my first hack.

found a board besides Yahoo! eGroups that does this also:

http://netbula.com/anyboard/

Description:

NEW! Post by email. User can post by emailing to a mail box, AnyBoard will retrieve the mail along with attachments and post it into the forum. This feature along with email notifications allows a user to interact with the forum by email alone.

This would actually be a rather tricky hack to create. I've looked into and tried hacking a way for email to be posted to a specific forum.

The trick is, that an email message is shipped to a mail server. The mail server does not know what to do with it (does not know to send it to a ubb unless a forwarder is setup, and even a forwarder won't work as ubb does not include an email server). The mail server sits in a state which waits for the email to be picked up from the server by an interacting user.

The way that you can get around this though, is for the ubb to email a user a 'form'. The form is then filled out by the user and submitted to the ubb (only html compatable email clients would understand the form though). After a user fills out a form, a submittal of the form will be sent over the internet and directly into your ubb. A routine would have to sit on the ubb to determine when an incoming message is recieved. After a message is recieved, the function can then post the email message to a thread.

The other way around this, is to build a routine which is put into a scheduler to run (a cron job). The routine would have to scan the location where incoming mail arrives on the mail server, decode the email message package (which will be unique for each and every mail server on the market), then post the email message to a ubb thread. A routine to pickup mail from a mail server, and post it to a ubb forum would have to be uniquely written for every mail server software package on the market. Also, such a routine would also require that one could access the location where the incoming mail queue is stored (which is not likely unless one owns the mail server).

We'll see what capps has to say.

Getting mail out of the mailbox is trivial. Most reputable ISPs allow you to place custom filters on mailboxes. Others can, as was mentioned above, do cron jobs.

The trick is all in the format.

Email is a threaded medium. UBB is linear.

How does one reply to a topic?

How would quotes work?

How will we authenticate the user? Mail-from is useless, which leaves mailing the password each and every time.

The last time this was brought up, I said the same things.

If you want to try and do this, go ahead, but be aware that it will NOT be easy.