I know this isn't a feature, but it'd be darn nice to have because of
the effort I just went through making something similar.
Everyone knows how the list server reads a simple text file with the
email address; it'd be nice to have some sort of deliminated style to it
to add other information to inject into the email message. I do
database/app code/etc. work so I can imagine that any engineer at Imail
will cringe at this, unless there is a flag at the beginning of the list
that is used to determine whether it should go into a parsing routine.
If written right it won't bloat the app for normal mailing list routines.
I wouldn't even suggest making a change in the web templates to handle
it, rather just do it manually. I already made pages that handle the
file I/O of the text for bulk imports and sanity checks of addresses, so
anyone could just tweak their own templates themsevles.
Basically a list "list" that has a header that any legacy imail will
skip over that defines it, then have vars like
email|var1|var2|var3|var4|var5| etc.
up to 8, 64 characters each for the vars, and when an email goes through
basically scan each one for
\var1 \var2 \var3 \var8 or maybe \%s1 \%s2,
basically something that can't be an URLEncoded value in a url by
mistake, and inject it in it's place. Some parsing routines, error
checking, etc. is all that's really needed.
Right now what I have written uses old-school <%variable%> mail-merge
style tags, and using a build off of blat that winds up relaying to a
mail server anyway. works using a txt, sql, or even an excel
spreadsheet, but it was a pain in the arse permission-wise to give to
our clients and make sure abuse wouldn't occur. After I was done with it
I thought to my self damn, why didn't Ipswitch just DO this already.
Spammers have had tools like this for years, we've all seen the
<%SUBJECT%> in people who have outdated jet drivers trying to use em.
It something like this existed in the next version it'd be an
substantial selling point, that's all.
Unless it already does?
-Keith
To Unsubscribe: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html
List Archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
Knowledge Base/FAQ: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/IMail/
