I am looking for a method that would allow me to replace an existing file with one from an email attachment. Any way of scripting this, so when an email comes in from a particular email id, it takes the attached file, and replaces an existing file.
I did this with shell scripting and a handful of tools, like mail, sed and a base 64 decoder I wrote. The script would receive all mail, and if a message qualified, extract the Word or Excel files, turn them to plain text and extract the info for insertion into an rdbms table. Since I was dealing with a small number of senders using an even smaller number of mail clients, this sufficed. If you look at a mail message using a text editor, you can see the attachment in there.
------=_NextPart_01CE1C17.9F57CCC0
Content-Location: file:///C:/0CB82234/hwattachment_files/image001.gif
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Type: image/gif
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------=_NextPart_01CE1C17.9F57CCC0
Content-Location: file:///C:/0CB82234/hwattachment_files/filelist.xml
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Type: text/xml; charset="utf-8"
<xml xmlns:o=3D"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office">
<o:MainFile HRef=3D"../hwattachment.htm"/>
<o:File HRef=3D"themedata.thmx"/>
<o:File HRef=3D"colorschememapping.xml"/>
<o:File HRef=3D"image001.gif"/>
<o:File HRef=3D"filelist.xml"/>
</xml>
------=_NextPart_01CE1C17.9F57CCC0--
An example of some of the scripting would be appreciated.
If your file is very much just text, you can include it verbatim like the latter attachment filelist.xml, but if it is binary, you need an base 64 encoder (simple in C, PERL, JAVA, etc., probably available online for free) to encode your file. Older email used uuencode for the same sort of function, but with appropriate tags.
Requirements first: Do you just want to receive an email, send an email, or forward one with a new or replaced attachment? Replacement seems a bit deceptive....
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