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Date:      Wed, 25 Jun 2003 22:39:30 +0200
From:      David Landgren <david@landgren.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Need a little help with a proof of concept cgi.
Message-ID:  <3EFA0882.7070304@landgren.net>
In-Reply-To: <5.2.0.9.2.20030625160311.00a09b10@pop.voyager.net>
References:  <5.2.0.9.2.20030625160311.00a09b10@pop.voyager.net>

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Dragoncrest wrote:
>     hi all.  I've got a little proof of concept idea I want to do and I 
> was looking to get some advice from some of the CGI experts on this list 
> to help me with it.  What I want to do is simple.  I have like 3 users I 
> want to track and retrieve the following stats on.
> 
>     1.  Total number of total messages received since XX date @ xx 
> time.  (since last clearing of counter)
>     2.  Total number of messages filtered as spam.
>     3.  Total number of messages filtered as viruses.
> 
>     I'm sure that there has to be a way to do a very simple cgi script 
> that will be able to be called each time an email is received and after 
> it is sorted so as to increment the individual counters related to each 
> of the sorting criteria.  Then when someone loads the cgi script via a 

Unclear on the concept.

I think you want to separate the tallying of stats from the display. The 
stats can be kept up to date via procmail recipes, content filtering or 
logfile tailing. That happens all the time.

When someone hits your CGI script, you only have to retrieve the 
statistics, whether they be from a flat file, a DBM file or a database 
table, and format the results as you see fit. This way you can also 
produce a test browser that works from the command line.

> web browser off your web server they can see the stats for each user and 
> clear the counters/mailboxes if necessary.  The stats would be my 
> biggest concern.  I'm no huge cgi expert and I also figured that this 
> might be useful for a lot of other people in some form so I'm sharing 
> the idea in hopes that those of you with more experience with CGI might 
> be able to come up with a working cgi script.  I don't think it will be 
> anything huge, but I'm unsure where to start.  Thanks for the input 
> everyone!  :)

First off, start gathering your stats. That has nothing to do with CGI, 
and will probably present enough challenges as it is to keep you busy 
for a while. You might also want to look at packages that do this sort 
of thing already, like mailgraph. (But otherwise your idea sounds like 
an excellent learning opportunity).

Good luck,
DAvid



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