I am a web administrator with limited UNIX/Perl programming experience. I
subscribe to certain lists and would like to quickly, easily, convert these
to web-viewable documents. My ISP has the technical ability to set me up,
but asks that I do the research and find the tools and the scripts to do
the job.
I have a special e-mail address to receive this information that is
separate from my own. Ideally, I would never need to touch this
information: When it arrives, it will be processed, formatted and filed in
a directory as straight text, where it will be read by DHTML/Javascript.
I need a utility to process the info from sendmail and deposit it into a
directory (which I gather procmail will do). At the same time, it would be
nice to strip certain lines of text from the message in a uniform way so
that the WWW application has an easier time with it (eliminating headers
and footers, stripping extra white space, etc). This I gather procmail can
also do... ??... perhaps in conjunction with another (unknown) product.
This seems like a common need, and I wonder if there isn't something
off-the- shelf to handle these requirements. Can someone recommend a book
or a piece of code or an available example out there to:
1. direct mail from sendmail to particular files based on the addressing
(FROM: particular-name(_at_)lists(_dot_)domain -->
directory/particular-name.txt)
2. process the data to make it uniform
I realize the latter is necessarily fuzzy, but if the product is tailorable
I can write a script to handle the vagaries of the individual lists: most
are templated, which means I can create an individual template to handle
each of them... provided I can learn HOW. I can also live with certain
imperfections-- less so with the reliability of the script than with the
results it spits out.
Can these things be bundled into the same script, or do different
applications need to handle each? And, if different apps are needed to do
this, what are available?
Note that, in my wish list, the most recently recieved mail would simply
overwrite and replace whatever text is in the directory, so I don't require
any special archiving functions: when a new message comes, the old message
is lost, and that is fine... ideal, actually.
***
I also would like to query certain moderated Usenet groups as a chron
function and have that info returned as mail that could be handled by the
same utility/utilities. IE, turning Usenet into a listserv. Seems pretty
basic, but I've not seen a lot of practical info on this. Does anyone have
a ready script to do that? Please note that I already know that it is
possible, I just do not know HOW to do it.
***
Most of all, I need instruction and documentation that allows me to figure
this out, as it is not my area of expertise.
If it is important, all of this will run on an Apache server. My ISP views
Perlscript with a attitude of arch superiority, but will accept it if the
security and reliability of the code snippet is obvious or well-established.
***
Seems like anything that can automate the __CONTENT__ processing end of WWW
design would be a product most web administrators would love to get their
hands on.
--TJ