Hello,

Has anyone implemented an email gateway for ELOG, allowing users to submit entries by sending an email?  Granted this should be possible using the elog client binary, but I thought I'd see if I've overlooked any examples or docs first.

Thanks!
Devin

Is it possible to submit entries using the elog client binary when the server is configured with webserver authentication (when the server requires the X-Forwarded-User header)?  One option would be if the server could support both webserver and kerberos (or even file) authentication, but neither 
"Authentication = Webserver, Kerberos" nor "Authentication = Webserver, File" seem to work.

In addition to using the elog binary to talk to the elog server directly, we've unsuccessfully tried using curl to post data to the apache server url (URL in elogd.cfg).  We can read entries using curl, but haven't yet been able to submit entries.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks,
Devin

The elog client binary does not work with webserver authentication.  One fix would be to support both webserver and kerberos authentication (authentication = webserver, kerberos), similar to how you currently support 
"authentication = kerberos, file".

A more general discussion of the elog client binary with webserver authentication can be found at https://midas.psi.ch/elogs/Forum/68318 .

Many thanks,
Devin

Just incase anyone's interested, we went ahead and wrote a python script to act as an email gateway for ELOG.  If anyone's interested, we'd be happy to share and appreciate any additional improvements.

- You can send a new message to the email address to start a new thread.
- You can reply to messages received from that logbook. If you include the message you are replying to in the body of your message, the reply will be threaded appropriately as a response to the initial message.
- The body of a new message will only include the text/html portion of a MIME message if it's available.
- Attachments work, although we remove spaces and add a random identifier (to avoid collisions) to each filename.
- the Author field is derived using the From address of the email.
- the subject field is derived using the Subject of the email.
- both single and double quotes are preserved in the author, subject, or body of the message

Devin

> Hello,
> 
> Has anyone implemented an email gateway for ELOG, allowing users to submit entries by sending an email?  Granted this should be possible using the elog client binary, but I thought I'd see if I've overlooked any examples 
or docs first.
> 
> Thanks!
> Devin

> > Can "Display" links work with multiple options? 
> >
> > "ABC | DEF" is currently one link.
> >
> > Ideally, it would be two links, each formatted per the "Display" string.
> 
> I don't understand your qyestion. You have an attribute with MOptions, so you
> get "ABC | DEF" displayed in the list view. All links in each line point to
> the individual entry, so what is the benefit of having two links for ABC and DEF?

Display Subsystem = <a href="/LogBook1/?Subsystem=$Subsystem" style="color:
saddlebrown">$Subsystem</a>

ABC and DEF links would perform filter searches of a _different_ logbook.   

Separate links would perform separate searches.

> > Is there a way to disable wildcard matching in searches?
> > A search for "1" returns "1" and "10" and "11".  
> > Is there a way to perform an explict match?
> > Could there be a numeric match if the attribute type is numeric?
> 
> That should all be possible with the build-in regular expression. Just type
> 
> \b1\b
> 
> where "\b" means "word boundary". I agree that a numerical comparison for
> numerical attributes would be better, I will put that on the to-do list.

Thanks, this is very helpful.

> > Could there be a multi-value option for free text fields, e.g. comma-
> > separated?  This would allow multi-parent relationships between log items. 
> > 
> > E.g. specifying 12, 15 as a value would create unique Display links 
> > for "12" and "15", based on the Display specification for that attribute.
> > 
> > This would be like "multiple fixed options", for the purpose of formatting.
> 
> Again, this is not clear to me. What do you mean by "display specification"?
> Is it the "List display = ..." option or the "Format attribute = ..." option?
> What is a "multi-parent relationship"? Why do you need multiple options for a
> free text field? Why can't you use the MOptions specification?

MOptions does not work because the options are not fixed.   The options can be any
numeric ID for items in a related logbook.

Consider the case of two logbooks, where we wish to associate items in the second
logbook with more than one item in the first logbook.  We could define separate
attributes for each "parent item", e.g. Parent1, Parent2, Parent3, then use a
"Display" spec to convert a numeric ID into a hyperlink to the first logbook's item.
  The exact relationship is not important, could be parent/peer/child - some generic
relationship.

The benefit here would be the same as having separate links for MOptions attribute
values.

> > After THREE tries to enter a long detailed list of questions, all have been 
> > replaced by just one:  why do ELOG textareas and entry forms lose all data 
> > if the browser goes back/forward?  Or if a submission causes an error?  
> > Other forms in other applications don't have this kind of data loss.
> > 
> > Submitting this now before I lose it again.  Will submit rest of questions 
> > as separate entries.
> 
> Really strange. I tried with Mozilla Firefox and IE 6.0 and none of them lost
> the entry data. What browser did you use? As far as I learned, data only
> vanishes on pages which have an HTTP header containing "Expires: ..." with a
> date in the past. But I made sure that the entry form does not contain this.

IE 6.0.   

I am accessing an internal ELOG instance through an Apache reverse proxy on port
80, per the FAQ.  Just tested without the proxy and there is no data loss problem
with back/forward.  

When I access the ELOG forum, I am going through a forward proxy to the Internet,
which probably explains the data loss on error messages.

Will investigate proxy configuration regarding "Expires: " headers and post here
if I find a solution.

> Please refreain in the future from sending many small entries. People being
> registered with email notifications on the forum get flooded by notifications.
> In worst case, write your posting using an editor and do copy-and-paste into a
> single posting.

Sorry about that, will do.

After THREE tries to enter a long detailed list of questions, all have been 
replaced by just one:  why do ELOG textareas and entry forms lose all data 
if the browser goes back/forward?  Or if a submission causes an error?  
Other forms in other applications don't have this kind of data loss.

Submitting this now before I lose it again.  Will submit rest of questions 
as separate entries.

Is there any way to search for all attributes _except_ a certain value?