[SOLVED]reading email subject INTO variable

Is there a way to read an email subject into a variable? (this is different to emailing the value of a variable).

I'd like to be able to send a mail such as "action:heating on" - interpretation / conditional logic would validate the source email address and the fact that the word action appears in the subject to run action group "heating on".

I want to avoid having to set a trigger from every single action i want to be able to control hence the need to read the subject (after the ":"), put into a variable and have applescript execute the action group based on that variable name.

any thoughts ? or perhaps I'm coming at it from completely the wrong direction.

thanks

[jay (support)]

Indigo's built-in mail handling can't do that. You'd need to write a script to do the actual mail checking - then it could parse the parts out and do other things based on that.

I'd quite like to be able to do this - can you suggest how to trigger the script?

TIA

Andrew

[jay (support)]

To be honest, if I were doing it I would probably write a plugin. I'd use the ICal Alarm plugin as the starting point because it already has the logic for polling an IMAP server, deleting messages, and getting/parsing data from the message.

But you could just as we'll write a Python script that just stays open polling the IMAP server.

I would like to point out that this is somewhat a security risk since it's fairly simple to send an email that looks like it's from someone else...

Thanks for that - a bit beyond me at the moment but I may come to it as I become more capable.

I appreciate that Email is insecure but for certain applications it doesn't matter - and at the moment the only way I can see of integrating with IFTTT is via Email.

Andrew

[jay (support)]

We contacted IFTTT shortly after they launched about adding channels. Unfortunately, they didn't reply.

For reference, I solved this with a mail rule in mail.app rather than an indigo trigger.

I have three primary rules:

1. act as a help function:
- iterates through all variables and values; adding each to the reply email message
- iterates through all action groups; adding each to the reply email message
- i therefore know the state of the system, and what i can do.

2. act as a doing function:
- dependent upon a number of factors (including subject and message payloads to help security)
- triggers the invocation of that action group from applescript (controlling indigo)

3. enable or disable the prism functionality
- i have a push notification through growl to alert when a new, non LAN-based, client connections.
- in the event i receive such a notification that i did not initaite, this gives me the option to 'close the prism door'