Smtpmail And Ssl Issues

[vdennis]

Most sites are now requiring SSL and I don't see where anyone has had any dealings with the issue. A change at Verizon now requires SSL or that the return (from) email address be that of the user's account. GMail, and others will let you get be with the alternate, but require SSL or TSL (?) on a different port. Hate to quit using SMTPMAIL as it has worked great within Progress for over 15 years, but I have the feeling that is coming to a close. Anyone had an issues around this?
-Dennis=

 

[joey.jeremiah]

sadly, i agree.

i was meaning to write an 4gl/abl wrapper for curl.

it would easily support ssl and any other features.

curl

what do you guys think?

 

[LarryD]

Joey, we've been using ABL input-output through curl scripts for a few years (on Linux) due to this very issue. Given some of the options and connection/authorization parameters, I'm not 100% sure a generic wrapper can be used in all cases but I'd love to have one available. We've used specific scripts for various API's with no problem (but not mail to this point).

 

[vdennis]

My 4Gl software uses Crystal Reports to create letters / forms / stuff like that. In this case the letters are dumped into a holding directory, then progress reads thru the list and sends the files out as a PDF attachment going back to the customer record for the email address to use.

For us, it would have to support sending more than one attachment, as well has HTML code in the body. And with SMTPMAILs vMessage, we are able to 'save' any email that does not get past our HUB, by creating a Progress record with all the needed information and move the attachment to a holding directory.

Lot to ask for.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

I definitely agree with Larry. It is not possible to wrap curl C library from 4GL/ABL.

I think, the curl C library would need to be wrapped by another custom C library (.dll, .so) with a simple interface/parameters that can be wrapped by a 4GL/ABL include file or persistent procedure or class etc.

There are lots of examples for SMTP and others.

libcurl - source code examples

 

[joey.jeremiah]

It is not complicated to do.

I think, the biggest thing would be to decide on the 4GL/ABL api/interface?

smtpmail.p uses a single call with all the parameters/options.

libcurl uses multiple calls to set parameters/options.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

Another question is what do you guys think of curl?

Is there something better?

It can definitely do everything mentioned and far more.

curl could also be used later for other protocols, like, imap, pop3, http(s), ftp(s) etc.

 

[TomBascom]

curl is *very* handy when it is available.

It's a bit of a myth that it is "available everywhere". Yes, there are binaries available to download for almost every imaginable platform but unfortunately that isn't quite the same as "my local sysadmin is willing to install it".

Every Linux box I've come across for ages has it.

Windows not so much but that's pretty easy to take care of.

Solaris, HPUX and AIX it's pretty rare to find.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

Installing anything on UNIX is difficult, at least for me.

 

[tamhas]

Presumably, the obstacle to install is human, not technical ...

 

[Stefan]

This post indicates that a TLS connection could be made using smtpmail.p.

 

[joey.jeremiah]

Even though some (not all) ssl/tls connection can be done with 4gl/abl sockets you'd still need to write the authentication model.

To me it looks like it just keeps getting more complicated. It's time we use an industry standard solution like curl.

Just my 2 cents

 

[RealHeavyDude]

As an alternative we use wget which integrates better into our SSL client certificate managemend on Windows which involves a smartcard middleware from Gemalto ( specifically fetching the SSL client certificate which resides in the certificate store of Windows ). Plus on our "engineered" build of Solaris 10 it is available. Don't know whether it is availabe out-of-the-box on a standarad Solaris 10 build.