[Mailman-Users] Connecting mailman and webbased forum

[Kevin McCann]

At 08:44 PM 22/04/03 +0200, Thomas von Hassel wrote:
>Is there a way to tie a mailman list into a webbased forum, like phpBB, so
>that msg posted to the forum are sent to the maillinglist and vice versa ...

I have extended an older version of phpBB to support the gating of a forum 
to a list in a PHP-Nuke environment (a long time ago, and I no longer have 
the code, so don't ask!). I have done the same for Phorum and SuperBB using 
Postnuke. Here's what you want to do, off the top of my head:

1) Add list address as a field to your forum table
2) Modify web app admin functions to be able to fill in above 
field  (ex:  mylist at lists.mysite.com)

3) Add Message-ID: to messages table
4) Modify web app to
         a) send web posts to mailing list with poster's email address in From:
         b) generate message-id: for each post, use in outgoing message and 
also deposit in database
         c) send with an X-Sender: my-app (to avoid loops)

5) Add dummy member to your list  (ie mylist-in at mysite.com)
6) Create alias for dummy member that points to, say, a Perl script

7) Write or find Perl script that will
         a) parse incoming messages
         b) determine forum based on dummy address
         c) ignore messages coming from X-Sender: my-app (avoid loops)
         d) Authenticate message based on from email message (match to, 
say, a phpBB or Postnuke user)
         e) compare message-id, in-reply-to or references to determine 
threading and thus parent msg ids in forum msg table
         f) perform MIME decoding
         g) and whatever else you want to do
         h) don't forget to do "newaliases", add to script /etc/smrsh, etc.




Kevin McCann
kmccann at bellanet.org
Duolian Consulting
(613) 236-6163 ext. 2376