Community challenge: Automated PBEM e-mailing

[Jazzepi]

llamabeast said:
Jazzepi, can you just explain point 1 again for me? I understand (and agree with) the bit that getting an e-mail telling you the new turn is out is fun. But I don't understand the "or fetch it from a particular place. The second part is important." bit.

Well, there are two ways to get the file. One is to fetch it through an e-mail client. I use Thunderbird. So, accordingly when I fetch the file it should store it /somewhere/. I'm not sure how, or where, it stores e-mail attachments that have been downloaded from the pop server but not saved explicitly onto the hard drive. My thought was that the program would keep track of which turn attachment to look for, and pick out the newest one by creation date.

This would remove the need to even save the file from the attachment itself.

Actually, I guess you could avoid all of this if the program was able to reach out over the internet and grab its own new copy of the turn file when you ran it and you just used the e-mail alter/turn file as only an alert.

The whole idea was to remove the process of saving the attachment off the e-mail into the individual game folder.

Jazzepi

[Zeldor]

Jazzepi:

I think that Thunderbird has whole inbox, messages and attachments in one big file. It would be quite dangerous for it to just save attachments in any place.

[Jazzepi]

Zeldor said:
Jazzepi:

I think that Thunderbird has whole inbox, messages and attachments in one big file. It would be quite dangerous for it to just save attachments in any place.

I was thinking that's the case =( Which would make trying to understand the file's architecture just to avoid a single step silly.

Would be easier if the program just fetched a new copy of the turn when you ran it, or looked in one place. Also, it would be nice if it gave you a selection to pick from, since I'm in multiple PBEM games.

Jazzepi

[Baalz]

my script is a batch file (for copying files around, launching dom, etc.) and an accompanying sendmail.exe which the bat invookes. How I have it set up is I just make a windows shortcut on my desktop for each game I'm playing and the shortcut is set to invoke the script passing in the args in for that game (game name, nation, etc). Get a turn notification, download the turn to my defauld download dir, click on the shortcut for that game and I'm good to go. I'm writing this from my phone, but when I attatch it tomorrow I'll post no brainer instructions so anybody can use it without needing a command prompt.

[Baalz]

oh yeah, you don't have to dl it to the game folder, just the same folder ( ie c:/downloads) every time.

[llamabeast]

You're writing from a phone? Wow, I'm impressed. I hadn't quite internalised that that was really feasible yet. I sometimes feel like technology sneakily keeps on advancing when I turn my back.