The mailing list for listmasters using Sympa

[Olivier Salaun <address@concealed>]

Hi,

Adam Bernstein wrote:
> 
> > Here's my problem:
> > When people sign up to my mailing list, I'd like to get other info 
> > besides their email address,
> > such as their name, zip code etc...
> > I could easily set up a seperate database to do this and have Sympa 
> > include that database. But what
> 
> I see two answers here:  First, the real name is something that Sympa
> already has a place for (in the "gecos" field, the naming of which
> remains a complete mystery to me), and it should be gathered on the
> subscription page next to the email address.  I tried half-heartedly
> to add that into the Sympa code one day, but never quite got it working.
> May be worth another try... or maybe we could get some help here?
> Olivier?

First, here is an explanation for the 'gecos' field name :
http://info.astrian.net/jargon/terms/g/GCOS.html

There is one such field in user_table (gecos_user) and another recently
introduced in the subscriber_table (comment_subscriber). This allows to set
a user's name once but allows list owners/subscribers to customize it per
list.

This field can be set the following ways :
        * when subscribing by email :
                SUB onelist My Name
        
        * by the list owner, via the web interface (edit_subscriber action)

And you're right, it is missing while subscribing from the web.
We might add it.

> Second, one easy way to gather all that other information is to write
> your own Perl script that gets called by the subscription form instead
> of Sympa's own routine, entering your data into whatever table you want
> and then maybe sending off an email to Sympa with an "add <email> <name>"
> command instead of doing the internal subscription routine (which would
> also, of course, incidentally solve the first problem above, but not
> very elegantly).

We already had requests for Sympa to collect additional information at
subscription time. These information would vary from one list to another.
We had no time implement this yet. Here is are some solutions for you :

        1/ Manage subscriptions outside Sympa. Sympa would then include
           the list members with a SQL/LDAP query. But you're right,
           it won't send any welcome/bye message, your apps will have
           to do the job. On the other hand, Sympa will manage user
           prefs and passwords.

        2/ Adam's second solution where you send an ADD command to SYmpa
           after your own processing.
           You could store your additional information in Sympa's DB,
           refer to 
http://listes.cru.fr/sympa/doc/sympa/node7.html#SECTION00760000000000000000

--
Olivier Salaün
Comité Réseau des Universités