Looking for Python code to obsfucate mailto links on web site

Tue Jun 27 18:43:03 EDT 2006

Dan Sommers wrote:
> On Sun, 25 Jun 2006 21:10:31 +0100,
> Andrew McLean <andrew-news at andros.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>> I'm looking at putting some e-mail contact addresses on a web site,
>> and wanted to make it difficult for spammers to harvest them.
> 
> [ ... ]
> 
>> Searching the web it looks like the best solution for me might be to
>> embed JavaScript in the web page that dynamically generates the e-mail
>> address in the browser client.
> 
> [ ... ]
> 
>> Now I could write suitable code myself, but would be surprised if it
>> wasn't already available. Any pointers?
> 
> Pointers?  What do you think this is, C?  ;-)  Try this:
> 
> def spam_averse_email_address( email_address, text ):
>     """return HTML-embedded javascript to create a spam-averse mailto link"""
> 
>     def char_codes( a_string ):
>         return ",".join(str(ord(a_char)) for a_char in a_string)
> 
>     return """<script type="text/javascript">
> <!--
> document.write(
>     '<a href="mailto:'
>     + String.fromCharCode(%s)
>     + '">'
>     + String.fromCharCode(%s)
>     + '<\/A>');
> // -->
> </script>""" % (char_codes(email_address), char_codes(text))
> 
> The newlines within the triple quoted string are important; use that
> function something like this:
> 
>     print "<html>"
>     print "<head><title>Title</title></head>
>     print "<body>
>     print "<P>%s</P>" % spam_averse_email_address( 'email at mydomain.com',
>                                                    'click here to email me' )
>     print "</body>"
>     print "</html>"
> 
> You mentioned accessibility; make sure that your HTML does something
> sensible if the user's browser doesn't do javascript.
> 
> HTH,
> Dan
> 

That's great. Just what I was looking for.