[Mailman-Users] How to enforce Author line?

[Mark Sapiro]

Robert Khachikyan wrote:
>
>On some of the lists, I want to configure such that the very first line 
>of the body contains the "Author: <name here>" line.
>
>(This is for legacy purposes).  And if the Author line is not given, 
>then messages are bounced to moderator and/or the sender.
>
>I tried putting ^Author: and other reg exps in the "topics" section, but 
>none worked.


For the most part, Mailman only has facilities for examining message
headers and not body contents. There are a few cases such as an
Approved: header for message pre-approval or a Subject: or Keywords:
header for topics where Mailman also will look at the initial body
lines for a match, but in the case of Topics, it still only looks in
the body for lines that look like a Subject: or Keywords: header.

Thus, if you were going to use topic filters for this the initial body
line would need to be

Subject: Author: ...

or

Keywords: Author: ...

The way to do what you want is with a custom handler. See the FAQ at
<http://wiki.list.org/x/l4A9> for information on installing a custom
handler. You can apply one of the methods for installing for a single
list to each of the lists you want to use it for.

The handler code itself could look something like the following:

from Mailman import Errors

class NoAuthorLine(Errors.HoldMessage):
    reason = 'No Author line in the message body'
    rejection = "The first text/plain part of the message didn't begin
with Author:"

def process(mlist, msg, msgdata):
    for part in msg.walk():
        if part.get_content_type <> 'text/plain':
            continue
        if part.get_payload(decode=True).startswith('Author:')
            return
        else:
            raise NoAuthorLine
    raise NoAuthorLine

(watch out for the wrapped rejection = line above, and this is untested)

If this handler were in the pipeline, say ahead of Moderate, any
message that didn't have a text/plain part or whose first text/plain
part didn't start with 'Author:' would be held for approval for 'No
Author line in the message body' and if rejected by the moderator, the
default reason would be "The first text/plain part of the message
didn't begin with Author:"

If the message's first text/plain part did begin with Author:, it would
pass this check but still be subject to membership and moderation
tests and miscellaneous holds.

If you wanted to apply the membership and moderation and
*_these_nonmembers tests first but not the miscellaneous holds, put
the handler in the pipeline between Moderate and Hold.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan