[BBLISA] sender-specific addresses

[Tom Metro]

Edward Ned Harvey wrote:
>Tom Metro wrote:
>> Are you "screen scraping"?
> 
> Not sure what you mean by that, but if it's anything like this:
> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/securitytipstalk/archive/2010/04/07/what-is-screen-scraping.aspx
> then the answer is no.    ;-)

No, that is a more narrow definition (that I hadn't heard of before) in
a security context, describing a specific hacking technique.

Try this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_scraping#Screen_scraping

for the mainstream definition.

Simply put, it is when you have to write code to retrieve and parse the
HTML of a web user interface, because the vendor hasn't provided a
proper API.

(The "screen scraping" terms dates back to the days when more modern
systems where being layered upon legacy mainframe applications, which
lacked APIs and were either proprietary or old and fragile, so no one
wanted to touch them. The mainframe applications were designed to run on
terminals with physical screens (glass CRTs), and thus the "screen"
part, though the "scraping" part was fortunately only metaphorical. :-) )

So are you parsing HTML, or does Microsoft provide a supported API?


> This is the only link that I know:
> https://developers.google.com/google-apps/admin-apis

That's a good lead, but they don't seem to have any email settings when
I brows to the APIs that relate to the admin UI. They have an email
settings API, but state that it is for settings the user would normally
be able to access themselves, so no aliases.

I briefly looked at the mail migration API, which seems to boil down to
an XML file format for bulk streaming your RFC822 message body to
Google. It doesn't appear to cover account provisioning.

A search for "nickname" (the term they use for aliases) turns up:
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/directory/v1/revision-history?hl=en

  Email aliases outside of an account

  Deprecated Provisioning API: Provisioning API does not support this
  feature.

  Directory API: Directory API users and groups support listing non
  editable alias email addresses that are outside of the account. These
  are functioning email addresses used by a user or a group on a regular
  basis.

and:

  User aliases

  Deprecated Provisioning API: Provisioning API manages a single domain
  account's nicknames, and, in the case of an account with multiple
  domains, the Provisioning API supports user aliases.

  Directory API: Directory API supports user alias for a single or
  multiple domain account. A user alias is an alternate email address
  that uses the same mailbox used by the user's primary email address. A
  user's alias can be associated with a different account domain than
  that domain used by the user's primary email address. The account can
  have single or multiple domains. The API does not use the concept of a
  'nickname' for a single domain.

So it sounds like in the first case they provide read-only access to
that info., but the "User aliases" is likely the more relevant feature.
More details on that API method here:

https://developers.google.com/google-apps/directory/v1/guides/manage-user-aliases

and it looks easy enough to use, but they confirm the limitations:

  Note: The maximum number of aliases per user is 30.

So it'd be pretty decent, had they not arbitrarily crippled t.


Josh Boon wrote:
> For those that use Google apps
> https://code.google.com/p/google-apps-manager/ does a good job at
> bootstrapping accounts. 

  Dito GAM is a command line tool which allows Administrators to control
  their Google Apps domain and accounts. With GAM you can create users,
  turn on/off services for users like POP and Forwarding and much more.

Handy. So if you just wanted to create an aliases now and then, you can
save yourself some programming and just write a wrapper script (assuming
there are other steps to what you are doing) around this command line tool.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/