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Modification to Listhandler to add "anonauthor"

Project:Listhandler
Version:master
Component:Code
Category:feature request
Priority:normal
Assigned:philipnet
Status:needs review

Issue Summary

I would like to propose the addition of an "anonymous user" option within listhandler.

My specific situation/configuration:

  • We have several MAILMAN mailing lists which are moderated and which require
    administrative approval to join
  • We have a Civicspace website set up and forums which correspond to the mailman lists.
  • Only a small subset of the Mailman subscribers have userids on the Civicspace site.

Want we want:

  • Users on the MAILMAN list post and will have their postings automagically submitted to the
    correct Civicspace forum, thus effectively turning the CS forum into an archive within CS.
  • Users of the Civicspace forums can post and have their entries sent to the Mailman list.

What currently happens:

  • When a Mailman subscriber sends to the Mailman mailing list, it gets propagated to the CS website.
  • If the subscriber does NOT have a valid CS userid, it is automagically created; the admin
    can specify whether the newly-created user will be blocked (meaning whether the user
    is allowed to login and post).

    If the user IS blocked, then his/her posting will not be
    done to the indicated forum.

My / our proposed solution: create a new option in listhandler of "anonymous user", i.e., a
valid CS userid which will post the EMAIL item as outlined above.

This has several benefits:

  1. A new CS user is not automatically created (in our case, beneficial, as we have > 500 on
    one of our mailing list and most of them won't even WANT a CS userid).
  2. We can set the privs of the anonymous user to only post to certain forums.

I have implemented this in a modified listhandler module; it appears to work just fine as follows:

  • A listhandler option has been added ("listhandler_anonauthor"). A text area has been defined on the configuration screen and the value stored as per other values in the configuration process.
  • If an anonymous posting (from the Mailman user) comes in:
    • If the anonauthor has been specified in the listhandler configuration AND the user is valid,
      then the posting is performed under that userid.
    • if the anonyauthor field has been left blank then the usual listhandler processing takes place.

As a new participant in this process (module submission) where should I post my version of the module?

Charlie (cyberchucktx)

Comments

#1

sounds interesting. Ideally, you should attach a patch to this issue. If you are new to generating patch files, you can attach the entire file.

#2

Assigned to:Anonymous» philipnet

#3

Attached is a more abstract solution (tested against drupal 5). It adds a hook allowing other module developers to handle authors that don't exist or don't have access to post.

AttachmentSize
listhandler.module.hook_author.patch 1.29 KB

#4

So to clarify, the desired effect is that emails from the mailing list are scanned, and then:

If a website user is found whose email address matches that of the sender of the message:
  set author of node to be this user,
otherwise (no user found):
  set author of node to be an 'anonymous user' (the anonauthor user specified in the listhandler configuration)

This seems like a nice solution to the problem where many mailing list users won't be signing up on the website. Subscribing.

#5

Status:active» needs review

Is the patch in #3 going to be useful for anyone?

#6

I think the patch in comment #3 would be fine if it also provided a Listhandler submodule which used the hook_listhandler_author() to provide the functionality described in the issue posting and in comment #4.

On it's own, I can't think of how the patch in #3 would be useful.

#7

subscribe

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