--On Wednesday, July 31, 2002 16:58 -0400 Charlie Summers <charlie@lofcom.com> wrote: <snip>

Basically, I'm telling you your CGI is wrong, and needs to be reworked. The problem isn't SmartList, and shouldn't be FIXED by SmartList, it should be fixed at the CGI.

I'd agree, except I'm not using a CGI. This is a HTML form with the action set to post to the -request address of the list. What I was actually expecting was SmartList to ignore the body, and I'd manually double check the address against the body. (This in addition to the confirm package.) My current plan is to re-work the form so it doesn't actually post anything, but that is dangerous in that the only way I'm getting any info then is from the user's browser, which could be completely wrong. (And I'd have thrown away the way to check it.) Sorry this wasn't clear in the original email; to recap here's what I've got: The user opens a page in their web browser (in my test IE5/Mac, therefore "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.15; Mac_PowerPC)"), enters their email address in a field and clicks submit. Their browser sends the form as a text/plain email to countrynews-request with a subject of subscribe. The '=' is part of the standard for how the browser is supposed to send 'post' forms (at least as I understand it). There is _no_ scripting involved, besides SmartList's internal scripts. Just pure, valid, html. I'm aware I'm trying to be to clever for my own good, but it almost worked... Daniel T. Staal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

--On Thursday, August 1, 2002 17:15 +0000 Tim Pierce <twp@rootsweb.com> wrote:

So you're using something like this?

<form method=post action="mailto:country-news-request@example.com?subject=subscribe">

Bingo! Well, there's a enctype="text/plain" in there too. ;)

That's pretty clever indeed. :-) If I were doing this I'd probably skip having them enter their e-mail address in a box at all. If they're submitting a mailto: URL, their browser will automatically put their return address (or whatever it thinks is their return address) in the From: header and probably the SMTP envelope too. SmartList should be able to get it from there.

Yes, but... That assumes several things. First of all, it assumes the browser puts a real return address in there. (Opera for instance has the option of obscuring your return address.) Secound, it assumes they are doing this from their own computer, not a computer at a library or something. Thirdly, it assumes they want to subscribe with whatever the browser assumes to be their 'default' address, and not some secondary address on their computer. Overall, those are probably good assumptions 90 percent of the time, but I'd like to at least be able to check them. If SmartList totally ignored the address from the box (but left it in the email), that would be a good secondary solution. (Checks are manual.) If SmartList could _correctly_ parse the email the browser is sending then the checks are automatic. Daniel T. Staal ------------------------------------------------------------------------ This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. ------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 5:26 PM -0400 7/31/02, Daniel Staal is rumored to have typed:

This is a HTML form with the action set to post to the -request address of the list.

Er...not to sound confused or anything, but instead of creating a form why don't you just make a simple link something like: <A HREF="mailto:mylist-request@mydomain.tld?subject=SUBSCRIBE"> ...and be done with it? Since you don't _need_ any other information other than the subscriber's email address, why bother with a form at all? With a form you're depending on how the browser deals with your code (and every one will be slightly different), where with a mailto: URL, it's all pretty standard. (Of course, if you _are_ planning on capturing additional information at a future date, this obviously won't work.) Charlie

At 3:36 PM -0400 8/1/02, Daniel Staal is rumored to have typed:

Actually, they just asked me to set up another list where they do collect additional info at signup. If I can get this working, I'll use the same system.

(*sigh*) Then spend a few minutes and either pull one of the gadzillion subscribe-o-matic CGIs available on the web (just avoid formmail.pl), or write one yourself in whatever system you like. It's obviuos this "method" doesn't work (since you can't control the browser), so use a CGI and be done with it. (Honest...about two minutes in PHP and you're done. Less than that, actually, unless you're holding more info in MySQL. But a sub mail? Two lines for the form, one line for the mail, done.) And since this is NOT really a SmartList issue (the same rules/problems apply to any mailing list software, or any forms handling in general), it should be taken to a different mailing list. Charlie