NYCPHP Meetup

[Rolan Yang]

Michael B Allen wrote:
> There are a LOT of support ticket systems around. You might want to
> checkout freshmeat.net. Unfortunately it seems like no particular one
> ever never suits your needs (which explains why there are so many).
>
> The support ticket system I always wanted was one that just used IMAP
> for everything where the "tickets" where really just emails. So when
> someone searched tickets it really just used IMAP to talk to the local
> IMAP server. Also there would be a mail processing script to identify
> or insert a ticket number in the subject line. Etc. Never found such
> a thing.
>
> Mike
>   

That does sound like a pretty simple solution, and simple elegance is 
usually quite hard to achieve!
What you're asking is not very difficult at all. I would suggest 
configuring a procmail or maildrop (or whatever scripting mail delivery 
agent you use) to feed the message to a php (I'm only saying php because 
this is the php list, but a perl or bash script would be much leaner) 
script which checks and rewrites the subject line. I can see it being 
done with about 20 lines of code.

If you plan to use a consecutive numbering system for the tickets, I 
would also suggest appending a stored hash code to the end of it. 
Without that, pranksters could change their ticket numbers or create 
other ticket numbers injecting garbage in with your legitimate tickets. 
This brings up another interesting question. What are you going to do 
about the incoming flood of tickets selling Viagra, weight loss 
miracles, and stock market tips? :)

~Rolan