[BBLISA] spam & autoresponse webforms (fwd)

[Dean Anderson]

On Fri, 12 Mar 2004, Tabor J. Wells wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 09:33:18PM +0000,
> David Cogley <cogley at gibraltar.basespace.net> is thought to have said:
> 
> > Nevertheless, how would I "rate limit the usage of the form"?
> > It sounds as though you would record all form accesses to a database
> > and then consult the database before processing form values. 
> 
> Exactly.

Yes. There's the rub, isn't it.  Remember that you aren't just a system
administrator, you are computer scientist ;-)  The solution is in the
study of queues and logs.  One solution is to have your cgi keep a log or
database of all the transactions, keyed by time. Every transaction is
emailed after a fixed delay or when certain conditions are met, provided
that the queue database doesn't violate some conditions, like the number
of entries from a given IP address.  This is a queue.

I suggest you take a look a sqlite, which is a good replacement for gdbm
and berkley db, and can be embedbed in applications, be used from perl and
python, or be used via a command line interface. It is only 25K compiled,
and doesn't require a server or any overhead or configuration.  Truly, if
you are thinking of gdbm or berkeley db, think of sqlite instead.  It even 
supports transactions.  Source is public domain.

		--Dean