[Dovecot] Vacation via database

[Stephan Bosch]

On 2/3/2012 5:41 PM, Gedalya wrote:
> On 02/03/2012 10:27 AM, Ralf Hildebrandt wrote:
>> * list at airstreamcomm.net<list at airstreamcomm.net>:
>>> We are moving our inbound mail to use dovecot LMTP in the near 
>>> future and
>>> we are looking for suggestions on how to implement a mysql based 
>>> vacation
>>> system.  If anyone has experience with this, good or bad please let us
>>> know.
>> Why not use sieve?
>>
> I am facing a similar issue. It looks like sieve can't fetch data from 
> a database, and dovecot can't fetch sieve scripts from a database. It 
> would be useful to have, perhaps, only a global sieve script be able 
> to query a DB, and it would be very useful to allow dovecot to fetch 
> sieve scripts (actual scripts, not a file path) from a database. Any 
> way to do this?
>

Retrieving whole scripts from a DB is nice, but not strictly necessary 
for your application. Indeed, only fetching data from a DB is 
sufficient.  Unfortunately, there is no standard Sieve feature that 
allows fetching string data from external sources. However, Pigeonhole 
has a few custom features:

* Assuming you're using SQL, there is an experimental plugin for 
retrieval of external string data from a Dovecot dict lookup (there is 
no LDAP dict afaik):

     http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Pigeonhole/Sieve/Plugins/Extdata

     You can give that a look. Should also compile against Dovecot v2.1 
and Pigeonhole v0.3.

* If you were using Dovecot v2.1 and Pigeonhole v0.3 (from hg) you could 
also  tinker something with the new extprograms plugin (using the 
execute command):

    http://hg.rename-it.nl/pigeonhole-0.3-sieve-extprograms/

    For more info read:
    http://hg.rename-it.nl/pigeonhole-0.3-sieve-extprograms/file/tip/README
    
http://hg.rename-it.nl/pigeonhole-0.3-sieve-extprograms/file/tip/doc/rfc/spec-bosch-sieve-extprograms.txt

And, as you suggested, Pigeonhole v0.3 for Dovecot v2.1 can also 
restrict the use of these plugins to global scripts.

Regards,

Stephan.