5.6.9 Using an External Processor

Command: external-body-processor program [args]

Pipes the message body through program. The program must be a filter that reads the text from the standard input and prints the transformed text on the standard output. The output from it replaces the original body of the message. args are any additional arguments the program may require.

The amount of data fed to the external program depends on the message. For plain messages, the entire body is passed. For multi-part messages, only the first part is passed by default. This is based on the assumption that in most multi-part messages the first part contains textual data, while the rest contains various (mostly non-textual) attachments. There is a special configuration variable read-entire-body that controls this behavior (see section Basic Settings). Setting read-entire-body yes in CONTROL section of your configuration file instructs Anubis to pass the entire body of multi-part messages to your external processor.

There is a substantial difference between operating in read-entire-body no (the default) and read-entire-body yes modes. When operating in read-entire-body no, the first part of the message is decoded and then passed to the external program. In contrast, when read-entire-body is set to yes, the message is not decoded. Thus, your external processor must be able to cope with MIME messages.

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