Listhandler

You mention that you didn't use the email_list_mailman module, but I'm confused about the mailhandler module. Is the mailhandler module actually required? I don't want to run a mailing list, but just to subscribe to an existing list as a regular user, and then import the list into drupal.

TIA.

--
A GNU/Linux newbie since 1992!

Thank you, I'm looking for functionality of listhandler + mailhandler.

If I would be willing to adapt this module to 5.0 what docs should I read to properly do needed changes?

u mentioned that u dont use listhandler...is there some other way u ensure that posting happens from list mails into ur forums...pls share

thanks

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OK, I think I've managed to make this work. I'm a pretty new Drupal user, so take all of this with a grain of salt -- I can't really say whether this is messing up other modules on the back end, but at least in terms of making listhandler and mailhandler work together under Drupal 5, it seems to have done the trick.

1) Install the CVS HEAD version of listhandler.info, listhandler.install, and listhandler.module

2) Either manually or by a new line in the mailhandler.install file, create the following element in the mailhandler database:

prefix varchar(255) NOT NULL DEFAULT'',

3) Apply the following changes to mailhandler. (Apologies for not knowing how to create a patch). In my version, this starts at line 120, in the section commented as "Create the comment":

function mailhandler_comment_submit($node, $header, $mailbox, $origbody) {
if (!$node->subject) $node->subject = $node->title;
- if (!$node->comment) $node->comment = $node->body;
+ // We dont want the node's comment setting to be the body of the comment.
+ if (!$node->comment or preg_match('/^\d$/', $node->comment))
+ $node->comment = $node->body;

I found this somewhere in the 4.7 mailhandler branch in CVS -- wish I could remember where so I could give credit, but anyway it's not my work. Apparently it got overlooked in the transition to 5.x. Without it, comments will post and thread correctly, but the body of each comment will be the node's comment setting rather than the actual body text.

4) Apply philipnet's settings diff patch to listhandler.

5) Enable both mailhandler and listhandler.

6) Follow the instructions in the HOWTO article on configuring mailhandler and listhandler to work together. IMPORTANT: The mailbox you set up in that process (not the list address, but the mailbox) NOT be your own or the listadmin address, as it won't actually be receiving all messages. (See final step for an explanation of this).

7) NOTE: Some more recent instructions for mailhandler in Drupal 5.x will tell you to use

taxonomy: [term]

when you're setting up the default commands for mailhandler. You can do this but you still need:

tid: num

in there as well, since listhandler looks for the relevant tid when deciding whether to get in on mailhandler's action. It might be possible to modify listhandler to look for [taxonomy], but again, I'm pretty new at this so I just went with the available solution.

8) From the hosting side, configure the email box that you set up when following the HOWTO instructions so that it automatically deletes any incoming email containing the header "X-Mailer: Drupal". This will keep forum posts generated on the website and then sent to the list by listhandler from ending up in this box, which then gets "harvested" for posts to insert into the forum. Without this patch, you'll end up with duplicates of everything posted to the site. (This is why this box shouldn't be a "real" email address -- you're simply setting it up to make the listhandler/mailhandler pair function correctly).

There's a string comparison in listhandler that's supposed to do this for you (i.e., filter out anything that originated on the website), but I can't figure out how to make it work, so again I went with the quick and dirty solution.

That's it for me so far. There are some lingering formatting issues -- things posted as full HTML on the website go to the list as marked-up plaintext, etc. -- but they're comparatively minor in my mind.

Hope this helps.