email autoreply

[charleshinshaw]

Hello.
I've looked all through SourceForge, PHP.net and this Code Library and this forum, but I'm either not seeing it, or nobody else wants to do this.

What I am trying to do:

1. Somebody sends an email to [e-mail].

2. When the mail server at domain.com gets the mail, a script executes on the server.

The entire process needs to be able to happen completely outside of a browser.

I've experimented by using CRON to access a php script that accesses a PHP file that checks a mail account, compares contents against a database entry, writes any new contents (for future reference) and acts upon them. This works, but a.) something strange happens when I use CRON to access PHP -- the script executes but creates errors on my server (I just need to look more into what is happening) and b.) this seems like a REALLY inefficient method of dealing with this problem.

Instead of CRON checking every minute (to simulate real-time) it would be nice if the mail server would actually trigger the event.

I don't know... has anybody here done this? If not, does anybody have any advice as to where to look or who to ask about this kind of thing?

Thanks!

Charles

[planetsim]

I dont think I quite understand what your trying to achieve.

So someone is emailing somone else (im assuming this is to another user on another domain to yours). Then you want to do something on some server (is this your server or there server?)

Ok well if thats it its not possible with PHP. You can make it do something when the user opens the email if you have a link or something or an image which when seen using PHP does something.

[rehfeld]

ive never seen that option on any of the hosts ive used, but i know what your asking for.

like for example, a mail client i use on my home computer lets me execute any program i want if it receives an email that matches certain criteria i specify, or even just execute a program every time i get an email.

if you find a solution please post back, i have a feeling i may need to do the same in the near future.

[charleshinshaw]

I'm simply looking to allow incoming email at my mail server to trigger php scripts.

If, for example, somebody emails [e-mail], maybe i want the body of their email automatically added to a database.

Or

If, for example, somebody emails [e-mail], maybe I want the email to be automatically distributed to a group of email addresses within a database, using custom variables from within the database.

Neither of those are real examples, but the concept of using email to interface scripts real-time, indepednent of web usage is potentially important. Obviously, if you are using email commands to update a web page, it doesn't have to be real-time, the page just needs to update itself the next time somebody loads it, but there are many tasks that DO need to be handled real time.

Currently, I am going to explore using Procmail to get this accomplished, unless anybody has a better suggestion.

I'll try to post whatever I find to work incase somebody stumbles across this in the future and is interested.

[danno99]

charleshinshaw wrote:

I'm simply looking to allow incoming email at my mail server to trigger php scripts.

If, for example, somebody emails [e-mail], maybe i want the body of their email automatically added to a database.

Or

If, for example, somebody emails [e-mail], maybe I want the email to be automatically distributed to a group of email addresses within a database, using custom variables from within the database.

Neither of those are real examples, but the concept of using email to interface scripts real-time, indepednent of web usage is potentially important. Obviously, if you are using email commands to update a web page, it doesn't have to be real-time, the page just needs to update itself the next time somebody loads it, but there are many tasks that DO need to be handled real time.

Currently, I am going to explore using Procmail to get this accomplished, unless anybody has a better suggestion.

I'll try to post whatever I find to work incase somebody stumbles across this in the future and is interested.

I realize this is an old thread, but I wonder if anybody has a solution to this problem.

To restate it; how do we get a script to run when an email message is received by the server? This must be done without any user interaction.

If that is not possible, is there any way to run a script on a timer event, so that it would poll the mail server to see if any new mail has arrived for an account, checking for new mail every minute for example?

[dagon]

pipe the incoming mail to a script. Depending on your setup something like this will work

| php -q -n /home/USERNAME/public_html/SCRIPT.php

[danno99]

dagon wrote:

pipe the incoming mail to a script. Depending on your setup something like this will work

| php -q -n /home/USERNAME/public_html/SCRIPT.php

It looks like piping the email is what I am looking for, and I'll follow that track.
Thanks.