posting through email

dpyers wrote: Very cool. What component did you wind up using? Any chance of posting the code somewhere?

I used JMail for the Script collecting the Emails from a POP box.... although you could use anything.

You ideally need access to your server running WWF as I wrote a Windows script that runs on a schedule every 5 mins.

psychopath wrote: Is this available?

OK Ive installed it at http://webwiz.infobahn.co.nz to see how involved it was for a 7.7a fresh install and it went in flawlesly.

Couple of catches

• At the moment it only uses JMail, but the Windows Script can easily be written for various components.
  
• The Windows Script resides on the WWW Server (ie created a new Scripts folder in the WWF install) and is run by Microsoft Schedular every 5 mins.  Thus you need acecss to the server, or atleast your ISP to setup the schedule.
  
• The Script checks a remote POP3 box which has a wildcard for a "domain".  In this case its easier to setup a subdomain (eg forum.domain.com) with an MX record allowing all mail to be collected in the POP3 box.
• The VBScript above collects all the Emails from the POP3 box and places them in a new table called emailmessages.  It also collects any attachments and saves them to the forum hard drive (renaming them to avoind and duplicate issues)
• All messages in the above table are then processed by a Stored Procedure (the step above also uses a stored procedure).  This proc checks for messages of a certain status (ie not yet imported to forum), checks the users posting privs (based on Email address) , and then either adds a new topic or adds a new reply to an existing topic.  Thus it is possible to actually start a new thread via Email.  If a message fails any of the security checks, it is deleted and not posted.
• Once a message is added to the fourm, the processing Proc above then sends out the notifications in exactly the same manner as the Forum ASP does (and does the same checks, eg not sending to the current user).  This allows total interaction via Email, ie reply to a post, and also have the Email post sent out to everyone else.  THis latter step uses a third table called "mailtable", which basically holds Emails being sent from the forum stored procedures and these are sent by a SQL job.
• The only change to WWF code is in the following WWF pages 

forum_posts.asp

if isNull(strAuthorIP) then 'CJH Added EMail Icon         response.write(VbCrLf & "            <img src='forum_images/e-mail_sent.gif' alt='sent via Email' width='18' height='17' border='0'>")         end if

This will show a little Email Icon for posts delivered by Email
post_message.asp

strEmailMessage    = strEmailMessage & "<p>" & strTxtEmailEmailToReply & "<br />"

So that there is a comment in the delivered Emails about clicking reply (this therefore needs the CONST set in your language file)
and

'Call the function to send the e-mail                 blnEmailSent = SendMail(strEmailMessage, decodeString(strUserName), decod eString(strUserEmail),    strMainForumName, decodeString(intForumID & "." & lngTopicID & "@forum.domain.com"), strEmailSubject, strMailComponent, true)

All in all it seems to work really well.  The attachments are successfully added to the forum posting, as tho' they wer done via the WWW interface.  It also obeys formatting comments, in that if the Email posting is in HTML, then it posts (Email and WWW) via HTML.  If in plain text, then the Email that gets sent out is also plain text.  Saves seeing HTL code headers.