MT-Import-Mbox

NAME

MT::Import::Mbox - import one or more mbox messages in to a Movable Type weblog

SYNOPSIS

     use strict;
     use MT::Import::Mbox;

     my $cfg = Config::Simple->new("/path/to/mbox.cfg");
     my $mt = MT::Import::Mbox->new($cfg);
     $mt->verbose(1);

     $mt->import_mbox("/path/to/mbox");
     $mt->rebuild();

DESCRIPTION

Import one or more mbox messages in to a Movable Type weblog.

MOTIVATION

I keep my email in a dated (YYYY/MM/DD) space. In a world where every other way of organizing email messages kind of sucks, this one doesn't necessarily suck any less but at least it's consistent.

The downside to doing things this way is that there aren't any email clients that are capable of doing multi-folder searches. When I need to find something I am reduced to using tools like grep which, despite having a certain charm, is pretty painful.

Movable Type, with its built-in search and trackback widget seemed like an interesting way to create a threaded read-only archive of my mail. I could have built something from scratch (and I have) but MT was most of the puzzle already completed.

The idea of using tags and comments for annotating an email was also intriguing. Using custom X-headers to tag an email from Ted as "asshole" is great until you need to reply to that message and forget to purge your personal notes.

Also I was curious to see if, and how, it could be done and I hadn't played with the MT source in a couple years.

EMAIL TO MT MAPPINGS

Threads Message threads are handled using Movable Type's trackback features.
Authors Normalized email addresses are treated as Movable Type authors and added to the database, as need.
Categories Normalized email addresses are treated as the primary category for a message/post. The message's 'directional' headers for are treated as the secondary category. For example :

+ foo@example.com

From
Cc
- Attachments Multi-part MIME attachments are parsed using the Email::MIME package. In the event that no attachments are found it returns the body of the orginal message as a 'part', or attachment.

        If only one attachment exists it is used to generate the body of the
        entry.

        If the first attachment content-type is determined to be either
        plain-text or HTML it is used to generate the body of the entry.

        All other attachments are written to disk. Attachments are written
        to disk as :

         /your/static/weblog/attachments/$YYYY/$MM/$DD/$MSG_ID/$FNAME

        $YYYY is the four digit year for the message as determined by its
        'Date' header. $MM and $DD the two digit month and day respectively.

        $MSG_ID is an MD5 digest of a normalized form of the message's
        Message-ID header.

        $FNAME is an MD5 digest of the attachment's body. If it is possible
        to determine the attachment's content-type then a suitable extension
        is appended to $FNAME.

        A messsage's headers are stored as a separate attachment in :

         /your/static/weblog/attachments/$YYYY/$MM/$DD/$MSG_ID/headers.txt

SETUP
Versioning
This package is designed to be used with Movable Type 3.2

Templates

Master Archive Index template. You will need to copy and paste, or link to, the custom version of this file located in :

/path/to/MT-Import-Mbox-1.01/templates/archives.html

Daily Archive template Ensure that it is enabled.

        You will need to copy and paste, or link to, the custom version of
        this file located in :

         /path/to/MT-Import-Mbox-1.01/templates/date-based-archive.html

Monthly Archive template Ensure that it is enabled.

        You will need to copy and paste, or link to, the custom version of
        this file located in :

         /path/to/MT-Import-Mbox-1.01/templates/date-based-archive-monthly.html

Category Archive template Ensure that it is enabled.
Individual Entry Archive template You will need to copy and paste, or link to, the custom version of this file located in :

/path/to/MT-Import-Mbox-1.01/templates/individual-entry-archive.html

Future releases may try to automate this process.

Plugins
In order to rebuild your templates with bi-directional trackback threading, you will need to install the MTPingUrls plugin.

     cp /path/to/MT-Import-Mbox-1.01/plugins/pinged-by-entry \
        /path/to/your/cgi-bin/mt/plugins/

Future releases may try to automate this process.

Permissions
Ensure that your MT installation is configured to allow both the default CGI scripts and the scripts using this library sufficient permissions to create an modify files in your (MT) static archive.

PACKAGE METHODS
__PACKAGE__->new()
CONFIG OPTIONS
mt

root String. required

The path to your Movable Type installation.

blog_id Int. required

The numberic ID of the Movable Type weblog you are posting to.

blog_ownerid Int. required

        The numberic ID of a Movable Type author with permissions to add new
        authors to the Movable Type weblog you are posting to.

author_password String.

        The password to assign to any new authors you add to the Movable
        Type weblog you are posting to.

        Default is "none".

author_permissions Int.

        The permissions set to grant any new authors you add to the Movable
        Type weblog you are posting to.

        Default is 514, or the ability to add new categories.

importer

force Boolean.

        Force a message to be reindexed, including any trackback pings and
        attachments. If an entry matching the message id already exists in
        the database it should only ever update or overwrite existing
        data.

        Default is false

verbose Boolean.

Enabled verbose logging.

Default is false

personal A comma-separated list of email addresses that when present in the From header will cause a message/post's primary category to be set as Sent rather than Received

OBJECT METHODS (you should care about)
$obj->import_mbox($path_to_mbox,%args) Where %args are whatever valid parameters you can pass to the Email::Folder::Mbox object constructor.

$obj->import_msg(Email::Simple)
Returns an MT::Entry object.

VERSION

1.01

DATE

$Date: 2005/12/03 19:10:27 $

AUTHOR

Aaron Straup Cope <ascope@cpan.org>

SEE ALSO

MT::Import::Base

http://pep.perl.org

http://www.movabletype.org

TO DO

Write message body to disk and store as an attachment Render the static version using MTInclude. This should allow for better searching and indexing by third-party tools.

BUGS

Probably, or at least a handful of special-cases. Patches are welcome. Please report all bugs via :

<http://rt.cpan.org>

LICENSE

This is free software, you may use it and distribute it under the same terms as Perl itself.