Major Additions - Email Integration (New threads/replies by email)

This mod is based off of the Mail Reply modification by Colin F to which I have obtained permission to rewrite and release.

This modification allows you to mimic email lists such as yahoo groups through your forums!

After installing this modification you will have new settings in your forum manager where for each forum you can enable this modification and setup a separate email address to use for each forum that you have this enabled for.

Just like how there is a separate email address for each yahoo group.

After doing so, members can subscribe to each forum that this mod is enabled for to receive notifications for new threads and replies.

Any posts in that forum, will be sent to them via email. (Example email attached below). The users can then reply to that email (which will then be processed and posted to the forums through the cron job that runs every 10 minutes), or they can send a new email to the email address and a brand new thread will be created!

Essentially mimicing an email list! Suddenly those users that hate forums, can still be dragged into the conversations and help keep the forum's activity level up!


BUGS!
These are the known bugs to date:

• Confirmed bug that email processing does not handle Japanese characters.

Unsupported Items
These are the items that are not currently supported:

• Some custom bbcode modifications will not display like they do on the forums in the html emails. Like glow, and the table mod.

TO UPGRADE

• Please see the file in the zip for upgrading!! If your upgrading from version 2.3.X you will need to reverse some file edits that are no longer nessecary!

NEW INSTALL

• See instructions in the zip file.

VERSION HISTORY!
(See the file in the zip for a complete history!)

• 2.6 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Joining an unmoderated public group will now auto subscribe you per the usergroup settings.
    • NO CONFLICTS with Instant Thread Subscription! See details in below post.
  • New Stuff
    • User Option Allow Auto Subscribe - This is an admin allowable, user option that let's the user choose to not be auto subscribed.
    • User Option not receive own posts - A new user option that lets them select to NOT receive their own posts via email.
    • Editted the phrase for the Auto Subscription script to tell people what to do if there are no listings.
    • Added error checks when saving a usergroup for if auto subscriptioin is entered with a forumid for a forum that does not have email integration enabled and also checks that the usergroup you are saing is entered in the forum manager as allowed to use email integration.
• 2.6.1 Release (BETA VERSION)
  • Hot Fix
    • It appears I was unseting a variable too soon. I've corrected this and it has resolved the issue with multiple posted replies on my test server.

Most of these will be slow to make it in til I know I've got the code to handle just about every type of email we could receive But in anycase, here are the ideas for future versions!

• End User Option to subscribe to just receive new thread emails, or receive all new thread & reply emails (current version does all new threads & replies).

Thanks to RedTyger, Bob Denny, Ed Kohwley and Chris McKeever for their additions and assistance with portions of this code.

Huge thanks also goes to the many individuals that have helped test various incarnations of this mod.

MAD PROPS TO: cgmckeever for a great quoting regex for the old format, and all the mods at www.4winmobile.com for helping test version 2.4 prior to release!!

You guys rock!

Please feel free to donate to my continued work on this modification!! It let's me spend more time on it!
Make a Donation!

Version 2.6 will work with both 3.6.8 and 3.7!

The #.X versions are the solid tested versions.

The #.X.X versions are the beta versions. New features and bug fixes will be worked in there and then when I have a solid version it'll be released as the next #.X

Thank you!!

~ Cyricx

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by capsize

Cyricx,
Any idea when you'll have attachments working? If you post a message with an attachment via email, the post is generated properly and has a "1" in the vb_post column "attach". There's also an entry created in the vb_attachment table for the attachment. Most of the fields in this table entry are correct (postid, userid, dateline). But there's no data at all stored in the "filedata" column for this entry. So the attachment is effectively discarded even though the post shows that it has an attachment. In my case, I've got attachment processing enabled, but didn't make any of the changes to allow unknown type attachments. The attachment type I am using to test with is a small .jpg file. Posting with this attachment via the forums webpage works fine. But via email it doesn't. This problem isn't new to 2.3.1. It hasn't worked in any previous rev I've tested either. 2.3.1 looks functional enough for me to deploy on my live board if attachments work.

Capsize, can you send the email you tried to send to testforums(at)campgaea(dot)org? Also please go to your admincp -> attachments -> attachment manager and tell me if you have it set to store attachments in the database or file system.

Originally Posted by onehost

Im not sure if you have this option or not, how would i be able to strip
out links from emails coming into the forum? It would not hurt either to be
able to strip out words, terms, sentences also.

another option is to ban individual users from sending email into the forum,
for those that may take advantage of the email system, sending emails
that should not be sent...

Thank-You

On the stripping words, links etc topic. I'll take some look into this. It shouldn't be too hard to do a quick regex with a global option. I'll add that to my list

On the second topic, you can easily control who's emails are processed. When you go to the forum manager and input the settings for the mailbox there is also a setting there for what usergroups can post messages from emails. This also handles secondary usergroups. So you only put those that can post to the forum in that usergroup and add that usergroup to that setting and your good to go

[Cyricx]

Originally Posted by dot2slash

attachments... work fine here .. with just the issue that picture-thumbnails not crerated.
its annoying start maintance scripts manually ... to get this updated ...
but thats okay for now ... a not finished feature with a solution ;-)

hope later this will be runns automaticly.

The email script should be running automatically now... albeit vbulletin's cron system only runs when the site has traffic.. but I have not had any reports yet of the script not running when ther is traffic accessing the footer template.

Are you have issues on your site with this?


The thumbnails in pictures is definately an annoyance to me too. There's sooo much I still want to do with this. But some of it, I get it functional, then I pretty it up. Unfortunately there are still a few things I need to get function, hence the beta, before I go back and pretty things up like the thumbnails

[capsize]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

Capsize, can you send the email you tried to send to testforums(at)campgaea(dot)org? Also please go to your admincp -> attachments -> attachment manager and tell me if you have it set to store attachments in the database or file system.

I sent you a simple test post that doesn't work on my installation of 2.3.1. I've got attachments currently getting stored in the database (vb default). I'll try switching this to filesystem storage and see if that makes a difference.

[capsize]

Originally Posted by Cyricx

Capsize, can you send the email you tried to send to testforums(at)campgaea(dot)org? Also please go to your admincp -> attachments -> attachment manager and tell me if you have it set to store attachments in the database or file system.

I have the same problem with vb set for filesystem attachment storage. In the directory where the attachments get stored, a zero-byte file gets created.

[capsize]

I think I've figured this one out.

Line 451 of emailintegration.php is wrong. It has this:

PHP Code:

$filedata = base64_decode($attach['data']); 


But this trashes the attachment data since mimeDecode has already done a base64 decode of the contents. This line always sets $filedata to 0 length for my attachments.

If I change it to

PHP Code:

$filedata = $attach['data']; 


then attachments seem to work.

Scanning through the rest of the file, I see this comment ... perhaps the code on line 451 should check this variable and decode it conditionally.

PHP Code:

$mime_class = new Mail_mimeDecode;
// decodes attachments if true, turn off base64 in the files section below
$mime_class->_decode_bodies = true; 


[Cyricx]

Bug verified. I'll get on a fix. It must have occured during the huge regex rewrite.

[AyeCapn]

Just noticed a potential bug.

At the bottom of each email it has links:

Unsubscribe from ForumName
View thread in forum (1 replies) | Reply via forum | Start a new thread via forum
View Forums

For me, the link to "Reply via forum" goes nowhere. The format does not specify a thread ID:

http://www.blackbus.org/forum/newrep...y&noquote=0&p=

[lbernstein]

The mod worked great on a test forum, but I just can't seem to automatically subscribe everyone to the forums and default everyone to "Instant notification by email" on my live forum.

I've created separate email accounts for each forum and enabled Email Integration for the forum. I've entered the usergroup ID's that can post and reply by email. What am I doing wrong?

I was also wondering whether under the Usergroup Manager-->Email Reply Intergration Settings, whether I have to list ALL of the forumids, or whether it defaults to all if I don't enter a value.

At this time I would basically like to have all of my current registered users to be defaulted to Instant Email Notification of all forums, as well as any new members.

[lbernstein]

When runing Auto Subscriptions I get a Database error:
Database error in vBulletin 3.6.8:

Invalid SQL:
SELECT title FROM forum WHERE forumid =;

MySQL Error : You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '' at line 1
Error Number : 1064
Date : Monday, December 10th 2007 @ 01:51:01 AM
Script : http://www.ambersight.com/forums/admincp/admin_ei.php
Referrer : https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?p=1398363
IP Address : 76.171.161.117
Username : lbernstein
Classname : vb_database

I'm not quite sure what the error means. Can anyone help?

[lbernstein]

I'm kinda new to this, so bear with me.

Was able to get the mod working this morning and the emails are coming through. I am having some problems with out of office and other auto replies. How are others dealing with those beyond adding more terms to the filter?

Still with a database error. Any suggestions on where to start on that problem???

L. Bernstein, MD
Damn it Jim, I'm a doctor not a coder!