> I would like to have a program alias that would post an web page
> based on the contents of an email.
>
> This is trivial in itself but unless I am missing something there
> is no way to restrict use of an alias.
A program alias is automatically sent all E-mail sent to the E-mail address you are
using. It's up to your program to figure out an appropriate level of security.
A couple options: Restrict based on IP address or use a password.
> If my alias simply copies the parsed text to an HTML file in my web
> server directory, anyone could post anything they choose if they know
> the alias name, so . . .
Yup, that's why you definitely need security in your case. I'd recommend restricting
on IP address. If you use just a password, it would be sent in plaintext.
> I was thinking of writing a perlscript that would first verify that
> the sender was an authorized "poster". If the sender was not
> authorized it would just dump the contents otherwise it would delete
> the header info from the file and post remaining contents (html) to
> the web page.
That's a good start, but make sure that isn't your only level of security. The
"From:" address is whatever the sender wants it to be; it doesn't even need to be
forged. Using the "From" address is the same as using a password of "secret": It's
very easily guessed.
> (The purpose for all of this would be to allow one or two people to
> send a daily schedule out to a mailing list as HTML and additionally
> post same to a static page on the web server, all in one step.)
If it's just one or two people, I'd go with their IP address. It should always be on
the first line of the E-mail, in the first "Received:" header. You could also use a
password, for added security.
--
-Scott
Declude: Anti-virus and Anti-spam solutions for IMail. http://www.declude.com
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