Send copy of incoming emails to DB ?

cmason22

I'm designing an application that would be vastly improved if i could automatically "CC" the database on incoming emails for certain users.

So when an email is sent to USER@DOMAIN.COM, the message would be available as normal via pop3 etc., but a copy would have been 'forwarded' into the DB.

Any thoughts on this?

jayant

create a forward for the email address
to a php script instead of an email address
using

| /path/to/php /path/to/script.php

instead of an email address and use script.php to add the contents to DB.

the catch: when u forward using this method, the email will not get stored in mail folder, so you must get that done by yourself in the script, so that the person can access the mail by POP3 etc.

cmason22

thanks. i'll look into it. do you know how i would parse the email? or do you think it would just have to be dumped right into a single field?

jayant

parsing email is pretty easy. its all plain text.
starts directly with the headers, which are then followed by data after being seperated by two newline characters (\n)

i am sure there are a couple of scripts available for this job.
just search for email header parsers or mime parsers.

cmason22

thanks again!

i was wondering if you might tell me how to properly add the line to:

@(#)aliases 8.2 (Berkeley) 3/5/94

Aliases in this file will NOT be expanded in the header from

Mail, but WILL be visible over networks or from /bin/mail.

>>>>>>>>>> The program "newaliases" must be run after

>> NOTE >> this file is updated for any changes to

>>>>>>>>>> show through to sendmail.

Basic system aliases -- these MUST be present.

MAILER-DAEMON: postmaster
postmaster: root
site_blackhole: /dev/null

root: ######
majordomo: "|/usr/lib/majordomo/wrapper majordomo"
######: ######,######

note that ###### covers up actual users/addresses for their protection. i'm not sure exactly how to add the line you recommended.

is it just:

username: "| /path/to/php /path/to/script.php"

jayant

I used CPanel to do it on my server.
didn't try the way you are doing.
do look
http://www.rayners.org/2003/03/31/mtemail.php
this should help a lot in parsing etc.
code is in PERL, not PHP.
maybe you should leave a comment there as well about this.

Majordomo is currently out of my reach. my laptop runs linux and is down due to some wiring problem. desktop only has win98/2k/xp/ 🙁

jayant

another idea:

make a script that logins via POP3. checks, reads and downloads the mail and inserts it into DB but doesn't delete it from the POP3 server, so the user can still check the mail.
howz this?