Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

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Re: XML-RPC Interface for Email

Author:	Eric J. Bowersox
Posted:	10/6/1999; 11:24:15 AM
Topic:
Msg #:	11787 (In response to 11778)
Prev/Next:	11786 / 11788

I've built a Web-based email system in the relatively recent past, running as part of the Webb.net online community system (http://www.webb.net). The front end (or "client" portion) uses Active Server Pages running on IIS 4.0 web servers; the back end (or "server" portion) uses the Qmail server (http://www.qmail.org) running on Solaris.

Qmail is extensible to do almost anything you want. My implementation uses a set of programs written in C to store user mailbox names in a simple flat database file, without relying on the system password file. When the Web server (client) wants to manage mailboxes on the server, it uses a simple HTTP POST interface to talk to CGI scripts on the mail server. From there to XML-RPC is but one small step...

Making email scriptable, though, is the kind of thing that makes me quake in my boots...can you say "spammer's paradise"? (Unless you take some serious precautions to ensure that that can't happen. I presume you know what you're doing in that respect.)

Eric

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