Subscribe to
the Possibilities Ezine

Subscription Terms of Service
Privacy Policy

RSS feed links

Blog Article Categories

Automation

CGI

Content Protection

CSS

Debugging

HTML

JavaScript

Perl

PHP

Recommendations

Related Sites

Statistics

Web Development

Web Site Maintenance

Misc

Forwarding Email To a Script

By Will Bontrager

Many hosting companies now provide cPanel or other site management software for their hosting customers to use. These, at least cPanel, make it easy to forward to a script all email sent to a certain address — easy relative to manually updating email forwarding configuration files.

This post provides a guide to setting up the forwarding and a script you can use for testing.

The Email Processing Script

Here is the testing script:

#!/usr/bin/perl # # Programmer: William Bontrager # Website: http://www.willmaster.com # Email: william@willmaster.com # # License Agreement published at # http://www.willmaster.com/master/LicenseAgreement.html # must be agreed to before installing or using this software. # # Copyright 2007 Bontrager Connection, LLC # ########################################################### use strict; # Leave above line as is. # Between the apostrophe characters (single quotes) following "my $address =", # type the email address the script's response shall be sent to. my $address = 'will@example.com'; # Between the apostrophe characters (single quotes) following "my $sendmail =", # type the location of sendmail, including any required or desired flags. my $sendmail = '/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i -fwill@example.com'; # Several sendmail flags you may consider: # The -t flag is required. # The -i flag tells sendmail to ignore the dot command. (Without this # flag, a dot as the first character on a line will end the email, # dropping any email content that may have come after the dot.) # The -f flag is used to specify a return path email address. (There is # no space between -f and the first character of the email address.) # # No other customizations are needed. # # # # # my $Email = join '',<STDIN>; $Email = 'No email received. Sorry.' unless $Email; open MAIL,"|$sendmail"; print MAIL <<THE_MAIL; To: $address From: $address Subject: Email to script test result Between the double-ruled lines is the email I received: ============================================================ $Email ============================================================ THE_MAIL close MAIL; print "Content-type: text/plain\n\nDONE" if $ENV{REQUEST_METHOD} =~ /^GET/i; # end of file

Use a plain text word processor and specify your email address and sendmail location where marked in the script. Use apostrophe characters (single quotes) instead of regular quotation marks when you specify the values. Otherwise, you'll need to escape any @ characters.

You may name the script file as you wish, EmailToScriptTest.cgi for example.

Upload the script to your server into a directory that can run CGI scripts. Upload with FTP and transfer the file as a text file, not as a binary file.

Give the script 755 permissions.

Type the URL of the script into your browser. This is to test the script and verify that it does send email.

If you receive an email from the script (subject "Email to script test result"), it passed the test.

If you do not receive an email from the script, something is wrong. See the "Troubleshooting Email Sent From Scripts" article for some things to check.

Once the script passes the test via your browser, set up an email address that redirects to the script.

Setting Up Email To Script Forwarding

Here is a guide for using cPanel to set it up. (At least one hosting company I know of uses a customized version of cPanel, which can be quite different than this guide.)

1. Click the "Mail" icon.

2. You'll see a list of menu items. Click on "Forwarders" (not "Email Domain Forwarding").

3. Click on the "Add Forwarder" link.

4. Now, specify the email address that should forward itself to the script. Then, specify the destination using this format as a guide:

   "|/usr/bin/perl /home/domain/public_html/cgi-bin/EmailToScriptTest.cgi"

   Notes:

   The entire destination is enclosed in quotation marks.

   The first character after the beginning quotation mark is a vertical bar character (also known as a pipe character).

   Following the vertical bar character is the location of perl and a space.

   Following the space is the server location of the script. (If you don't know how to determine the server location of the script, install Master Pre-Installation Tester into the same directory and use its "Environment variables" menu item. It will give you a lot of information, including paths. Somewhere in there, you'll find the server path of the script being used and you'll be able to extrapolate the path you need.)

   The script location is ended by a quotation mark.

When the forwarding has been set up, sending an email to the address being forwarded causes the testing script to respond by sending you an email containing the email it received. If it doesn't, and everything was okay when you tested the script with a browser, the destination is likely to be incorrect.

If the destination is certainly correct, there may be email filters somewhere between the testing script and your email program. Your filters may have caught it. Or maybe your ISP's filters did a number on it. Consult the "Troubleshooting Email Sent From Scripts" article again.

January 18, 2007

Please note: Articles on this website are presented "as is". However -

If you have a question about a CGI script, HTML, CSS, PHP, or JavaScript
Ask one of our Experts and you'll have your answer!
Click here for details.

© 1998-2001 William and Mari Bontrager
© 2001-2008 Bontrager Connection, LLC