[Mailman-Users] Command line access to Mailman 3 (was Re: Filtering out Digest replies)

[Barry Warsaw]

On Jul 12, 2016, at 04:04 PM, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

>Thomas Gramstad writes:
>
> > There is also the issue of listadmin, the script for command line 
> > processing of list moderation requests. I'm not sure this script 
> > is being updated currently, and so probably does not work with 
> > Mailman 3(?).  
>
>I don't know if it's been integrated yet, but mailmanclient has a nice
>command interpreter that a GSoC student built for us.  Even if your
>particular use case isn't supported yet, it will be easy to do so.
>
>I think you'll also find Postorius much more efficient than the
>current web interface.  That may not be enough since you say managing
>moderation with the current interface is out of the question, but
>since moderation is an activity that needs human input, and UI changes
>(ie, use of command line) were enough to make it feasible, Postorius
>is something you should look at before deciding to stay with a product
>after end-of-line.

Mailman 3 has a very rich REST API which can control and administer the core
system.  In fact, this is exactly how Postorius and HyperKitty work, via
mailmanclient, the official Python bindings for the REST API.  Being
HTTP+JSON, you can in fact talk to Core's REST API using any language you want
(even curl for example).

However, it's also important to understand that Core's REST API is an
administrative API with full access and no authentication (other than Basic
AUTH).  It is intended to be exposed on localhost only.

It's long been discussed to create an "authenticating proxy" which could be
exposed on any public IP, and which would allow site admins, list admins,
moderators, and users to script the Core, performing any operations that their
authorization level permits.  Andrew Stuart wrote a project called mailmania
(available on GitLab) which implements one take on this.  At Pycon 2016, the
Mailman sprinters discussed how to move forward on an official proxy, taking
inspiration from mailmania.  I think we fleshed out a good approach which will
be much richer than any MM2 scripting facility, and could be one of the killer
apps for MM3 (including IMHO HyperKitty's ability to post from the web, and
Postorius's vastly better U/I).

We even have name for the project, Lemme and a project page:
https://gitlab.com/mailman/lemme/tree/master

Several of us are going to start working on this after the MM3.1 release goes
out (hopefully in the next month or so).  It will take work in the Core as
well as work on Lemme, so we invite anybody interested in helping out to join
us over in mailman-developers.

Cheers,
-Barry
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