[thelist] cms: email website updates to mysql?

A friend of mine updated his blog to work in this way for a while. He used
perl code for the functionality.

As far as I understand he had a mail account sitting on a linux box. When
mail was received at the account it triggered a perl script that parsed the
mail. From there one can set up whatever parameters one will to parse the
mail. For instance, security could be implemented by ensuring the sender is
on a known list, or that a password string is included in the mail. In his
case, he just dumped the whole mail (with some headers stripped out) into
the database, but you could format the mail with xml or a custom tag system
to mark different firlds if necessary.

As to how you automate the firing of the script when mail is received, I'm
not entirely sure but I'll ask him when he's online later (if I remember
;-).

Another alternative would be to have a script that checks a POP account at
regular intervals and parses whatever content it finds there. If you are
using an Exchange server (unlikely if you're a PHP-head) then I would
probably recommend using either CDONTS with ASP, or a component like JMail
to read a mailbox.

Good luck!

.steve


----------------------------------
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rachel Cunliffe [mailto:rachel@cre8d-design.com]
> Sent: den 29 april 2002 04:06
> To: thelist@lists.evolt.org
> Subject: [thelist] cms: email website updates to mysql?
>
>
> hiya,
>
> i'm looking for resources regarding simple cms which can be
> done, as an
> alternative to web forms, via email - to update fields in a
> mysql database.
> of course, there'd need to be reasonable security measures in place.
>
> links/examples most appreciated..
>
> .:peace
> rachel
>

>