Comments on: How do I create a Thunderbird message filter for an attachment type? http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/ Just another WordPress weblog Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:18:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: kellan http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/comment-page-1/#comment-130880 kellan Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:49:13 +0000 http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/#comment-130880 <p>Thanks guys! </p> <p>I was feeling dumb for not being able to find a feature I <em>knew</em> had to be there. Comforted that smarter people then I came to similar conclusions.</p> <p>And yeah, digging into the Lightning codebase to build my own simplified version might be the way to go.</p> Thanks guys!

I was feeling dumb for not being able to find a feature I knew had to be there. Comforted that smarter people then I came to similar conclusions.

And yeah, digging into the Lightning codebase to build my own simplified version might be the way to go.

]]> By: Mike Macgirvin http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/comment-page-1/#comment-128066 Mike Macgirvin Wed, 17 Oct 2007 01:26:25 +0000 http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/#comment-128066 <p>I didn't claim it was perfect, but there don't seem to be any selectors available for content-disposition filenames (which also have no guarantee of what type of data they might contain). </p> <p>But on closer examination, I notice that the recent Thunderbird filters don't even have a selector for body contents. So I don't see an easy way out of this at all. You can still create a 'view' with body contents, but not a filter. Looks like filters now can only examine SMTP headers - and there's nothing in the headers to indicate anything about potential MIME leaf nodes. Yuk. </p> <p>This is probably best done as a server-side process, ala procmail although I personally hate procmail going back 15-20 years and wouldn't wish that on anybody. One could also use a scripting language like php or perl or whatever with an IMAP extension and be able to examine things in the attachment structure and grab the content-disposition filename; compare with *.ics and also look at the content-type to be sure it wasn't a Swiftview Image command Set file or some other .ics entity. This could possibly achieve the desired result. </p> <p>But it certainly isn't lazy.</p> <p>There's one other possibility - which would be a thunderbird plugin. I know they finally have a reasonably stable calendar plugin (it only took ten years). Might be able to grab the .xpi source for that or some other attachment handler and tweak it to output/copy the file. I haven't actually done one of these plugins myself so I don't know how hard it might be.</p> I didn’t claim it was perfect, but there don’t seem to be any selectors available for content-disposition filenames (which also have no guarantee of what type of data they might contain).

But on closer examination, I notice that the recent Thunderbird filters don’t even have a selector for body contents. So I don’t see an easy way out of this at all. You can still create a ‘view’ with body contents, but not a filter. Looks like filters now can only examine SMTP headers – and there’s nothing in the headers to indicate anything about potential MIME leaf nodes. Yuk.

This is probably best done as a server-side process, ala procmail although I personally hate procmail going back 15-20 years and wouldn’t wish that on anybody. One could also use a scripting language like php or perl or whatever with an IMAP extension and be able to examine things in the attachment structure and grab the content-disposition filename; compare with *.ics and also look at the content-type to be sure it wasn’t a Swiftview Image command Set file or some other .ics entity. This could possibly achieve the desired result.

But it certainly isn’t lazy.

There’s one other possibility – which would be a thunderbird plugin. I know they finally have a reasonably stable calendar plugin (it only took ten years). Might be able to grab the .xpi source for that or some other attachment handler and tweak it to output/copy the file. I haven’t actually done one of these plugins myself so I don’t know how hard it might be.

]]> By: Phil Ringnalda http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/comment-page-1/#comment-125749 Phil Ringnalda Sat, 13 Oct 2007 03:07:55 +0000 http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/#comment-125749 <p>Hrm, I don't suppose they're all sent with the right content-type? It's a little ugly, but a filter on "body contains" does get to look at <em>all</em> of a multipart/mixed body, so a filter looking for "Content-Type: text/calendar" ought to find them (well, and the notification mail from this comment, but I like to make the Lazy in Lazy Web refer to me, not just to you).</p> Hrm, I don’t suppose they’re all sent with the right content-type? It’s a little ugly, but a filter on “body contains” does get to look at all of a multipart/mixed body, so a filter looking for “Content-Type: text/calendar” ought to find them (well, and the notification mail from this comment, but I like to make the Lazy in Lazy Web refer to me, not just to you).

]]> By: Mike Macgirvin http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/comment-page-1/#comment-125603 Mike Macgirvin Fri, 12 Oct 2007 23:08:52 +0000 http://laughingmeme.org/2007/10/12/how-do-i-create-a-thunderbird-message-filter-for-an-attachment-type/#comment-125603 <p>You could try filtering on the mime type declaration - e.g. body contains</p> <p>Content-type: text/calendar</p> <p>That's about the only thing I can think of that might work.</p> You could try filtering on the mime type declaration – e.g. body contains

Content-type: text/calendar

That’s about the only thing I can think of that might work.

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