[Mailman-Users] Importing data from an external source.

[Alan Meyer]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I'm using mailman as the list manager for a club with about
150 members.  We have an online roster system that members
use to update their names, addresses, email addresses, and 
some club specific stuff.  However the roster software (home
grown stuff that I wrote in Perl) can't do the sophisticated
mailing service that mailman handles, so we use both programs.

What I'm hoping for is a way to update the mailman database
from my online roster.  One approach might be an API call I
could use to update the mailman database (I could write my
end in Python if necessary).  Another approach might be an
import function that allows me to specify a file containing
names and email addresses to import.

I searched the archives but got no hits on "import" or "api".

The FAQ suggests searching Google for "import" or "convert" with
"inurl:mail.python.org/pipermail/mailman-users/".  But that
wasn't helpful and I got no hits on the standard archives
search engine.

I did find a tantalizing hint in the FAQ at 5.1.  It looks
like if I create a file in mbox format I might be able to
import it.  It said to place the list as follows:

 archives/private/<list>.mbox/<list>.mbox
  (where <list> is your list name)

and then run:
 bin/arch <list> archives/private/<list>.mbox/<list>.mbox

Will that help me?

I may not actually be able to do it even if it will because
I'm using the computer in a hosted environment that provides
me a Linux user login but it's running mailman under the 
mailman account using cpanel.  I'd have to convince someone
to let me do this - which might be possible if it's a secure
thing to do, but not if it could affect other accounts on the
system.

I can't find any mailman files in my account tree and I'm 
assuming they're kept separately somewhere that I can't 
read much less update.

Thanks in advance for any help or ideas.

    Alan


Alan Meyer
ameyer2 at yahoo.com


 
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