dovecot - Oct 2006 - dovecot mailbox to csv

We (the Math department at the U of Wisconsin) recently switched over from 
another server to dovecot

One thing that a lot of people here do is set up an on-line form that sends 
them email. They use formmail for this. I have them edit their procmail 
config so that all the messages go into a particular mail folder.... So far 
so good.

With our old system, all messages in a folder were kept in a single file. 
With dovecot, they go into a couple of different directories.  This is 
problematic because we often need to convert the form field data to csv 
values so it can be imported into a spreadsheet. So a professor can create 
an on-line form and end up with the data from it in an Excell spreadsheet. 
Slick (when it works).

I understand that I can make dovecot store messages in a file by leaving the 
trailing slash off when specifying the folder name. Sample procmail segment:

:0:
* Subject:.*\[feedback\]
.feedback

But I can't get the feedback folder to show up in the list of IMAP folders 
in my mail client. I've tried Outlook Express and Thunderbird. If I put the 
slash at the end, it creates a .feedback folder and then I can see it in my 
mail client. But then I can't export it to cvs.

Anybody know why I can't see the .feeback folder? Or maybe somebody has a 
good way to get data from the body of messages stored in a dovecot folder, 
for example, .feedback/cur/ and .feedback/new/.

John Heim wrote:
> But I can't get the feedback folder to show up in the list of IMAP
> folders in my mail client. I've tried Outlook Express and Thunderbird.
> If I put the slash at the end, it creates a .feedback folder and then
> I can see it in my mail client. But then I can't export it to cvs.
>
> Anybody know why I can't see the .feeback folder? Or maybe somebody
> has a good way to get data from the body of messages stored in a
> dovecot folder, for example, .feedback/cur/ and .feedback/new/.
>
>

Read the dovecot documentation on default_mail_env - you have to tell
dovecot you want to use mbox instead of maildirs

On Wed, 4 Oct 2006, John Heim wrote:
> We (the Math department at the U of Wisconsin) recently switched over from 
> another server to dovecot
>
> One thing that a lot of people here do is set up an on-line form that sends
> them email. They use formmail for this. I have them edit their procmail 
> config so that all the messages go into a particular mail folder.... So far
> so good.
>
> With our old system, all messages in a folder were kept in a single file. 
> With dovecot, they go into a couple of different directories.  This is 
> problematic because we often need to convert the form field data to csv 
> values so it can be imported into a spreadsheet. So a professor can create
an
> on-line form and end up with the data from it in an Excell spreadsheet.
Slick
> (when it works).
>
> I understand that I can make dovecot store messages in a file by leaving
the
> trailing slash off when specifying the folder name. Sample procmail
segment:
>
> :0:
> * Subject:.*\[feedback\]
> .feedback
>
> But I can't get the feedback folder to show up in the list of IMAP
folders in
> my mail client. I've tried Outlook Express and Thunderbird. If I put
the
> slash at the end, it creates a .feedback folder and then I can see it in my
> mail client. But then I can't export it to cvs.
Is it possible it would be better to just process one message at
a time as they arrive and append whatever info to the CSV file
at that time?  The procmail rule would look something like this:

 	:0 c:
 	* Subject:.*\[feedback\]
 	| /path/to/script/which/analyzes/message

That copies the message to the pipe command, so that the
rest of the procmail file continues to apply to the message.
(You might still file them in a folder.)

If you do this, you don't have to worry about the format of the
mailboxes that messages are delivered to, and your processing
can be completely independent of it.

Alternatively, if you'd like to do it all in a batch, the
format you are now using (with each message in a separate
folder) is called "maildir", rather than "mbox".  There are
tools to convert from one to the other.  Or, you can use a
Perl script and use the tools from the Mail-Box distribution of
Perl modules.  These modules can read LOTS of different formats.
See http://search.cpan.org/~markov/Mail-Box-2.068/ .

   - Logan